Photo: house.gov

Photo: house.gov

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann had a chance Friday morning to question the top lawyer for the Federal Reserve Bank during hearings into an audit of the Fed proposed by Rep. Ron Paul (with whom she’ll share a stage at the University of Minnesota tonight). “The Federal Reserve seems to have the power to do anything it wants to do without any restrictions whatsoever,” Bachmann said.

Bachmann was talking about Section 13.3 of the Federal Reserve Act, under which the Fed can make discount-rate loans to, for instance, bail out Bear Stearns.

The Fed’s top lawyer, Scott Alvarez (who charmingly begins every answer with “So … “), said the Fed had used its 13.3 powers only in the 1930s and 1960s, not the 1980s as Bachmann suggested. Under later questions on the same topic, he said 13.3 could only be invoked by a supermajority of the Fed’s board and under extreme circumstances.

Alvarez is the first of two witnesses before the House Financial Services Committee today. Next up was bestselling Libertarian author Thomas Woods, whose book “Meltdown” (with a foreward by Paul) Bachmann has studied.

I lost the House video feed for most of Woods’ testimony, but it seems to have gone less well than the average book-signing for him. As the hearing broke up, Woods could be heard off-mic, grumbling: “Good grief, I don’t know why I couldn’t get across what I was trying to say.”