Grayson: Fed played 'Russian roulette' with U.S. money

Former U.S. congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) appeared on Countdown Monday evening to discuss how an audit of the Federal Reserve revealed the private bank giving $26 trillion to U.S and foreign banks without Congress' authorization.

"For the first time in history, I'm talking the 100 year history of the Federal Reserve, they played favorites," Grayson told host Keith Olbermann. "They said we'll give a hundred billion to this institution, another hundred billion to this institution, and so on down the line, when you and I couldn't even come close to accessing that kind of money of those terms."

Grayson mentioned the leniency the Fed had with giving money to the banks.

"They lend out this money at 0.01 percent interest," he said. "Go try to get a loan like that from your bank. It was corporate welfare, pure and simple, and what they were doing is they were playing around with the value of the money in your pocket, and the money in my pocket."

"They were taking the U.S dollars and playing Russian Roulette with it, giving it out in enormous staggering sums in the hope that they might get it back. They did get most of it back, but what about next time."

He added: "The regional banks of the Fed are actually populated and controlled by the local banks. And all of these bailouts were actually administered by the Federal Reserve bank of New York, which has on its board many Wall Street executives. I'm talking about current Wall Street executives. Not the Tim Geithers of the world, the people who used to be or in the future will work for Wall Street, but the current Wall St. executives on the board making decisions on who would get what themselves."

The Government Accountability Office revealed that the Fed gave out over $16 trillion to U.S. and international financial institutions between 2007 and 2010 without revealing to Congress. Another $10 trillion was given out to foreign institutions in currency swaps.

WATCH: Video from Current TV, which was broadcast on November 28, 2011.