Whatever it is, they’ve been given 30 more days to do it:
The Federal Reserve has until Sept. 30 to appeal a federal judge’s order requiring the central bank to identify financial institutions that benefited from its emergency loans.
The Fed’s Board of Governors asked Manhattan Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska to delay enforcement of her Aug. 24 decision that the identities of borrowers in 11 lending programs be made public by Aug. 31. The central bank wanted Preska to stay her order until the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York can hear the case.
The Fed’s “ability to effectively manage the current, and any future, financial crisis” would be impaired, according to the Fed’s motion for a stay. It said “significant harms” could befall the U.S. economy as well…
…The Fed has refused to name the financial firms it lent to or disclose the amounts or the assets put up as collateral under the emergency programs, saying disclosure might set off a run by depositors and unsettle shareholders.
The Bloomberg lawsuit said the collateral lists “are central to understanding and assessing the government’s response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression.”
There’s the fascism aspect to this – if the Fed is allowed to get away with saying that it can’t disclose because, in its unverifiable judgment, it would cause harm, then no government or quasi-government agency will have to disclose. On this grounds alone, the Fed should be smacked down.
On the economic aspect of it – you can bet your bottom dollar that if the Fed was on the square, they’d just release the data. Its not like we’d be getting someone’s private address, or the name of our covert agent in China…that is the kind of stuff which must be protected from public disclosure, not which banks got government swag.
The longer we keep up with this species of action – bail outs, money-shuffling, etc – the worse it will be when it does come crashing down. While Bernanke is deathly afraid that his economic sainthood might be revoked the by the liberal MSM if the truth comes out, the fact of the matter is that no rational economic decisions can be made by anyone until all the cards are on the table. The only people getting anything out of this secretiveness are well-connected financial speculators who are playing people for suckers in the stock and bond markets.
Time to get the facts, and let the chips fall where they may.
Blogs For Victory 