The Fed is refusing to disclose the recipients of $2 trillion dollars
in loans, even after Bloomberg sued under the Freedom of Information
Act to get the information.
“If they told us what they held, we would know the potential
losses that the government may take and that’s what they don’t
want us to know,” said Carlos Mendez, who oversees about $14
billion at New York-based ICP Capital LLC.***
Congress is demanding more transparency from the Fed and Treasury
on the bailout efforts, most recently during Dec. 10 hearings by the
House Financial Services committee when Representative David Scott,
a Georgia Democrat, said Americans had “been bamboozled.”***
“Americans don’t want to get blindsided anymore,”
Mendez said in an interview. “They don’t want it sugarcoated
or whitewashed. They want the complete truth. The truth is we can’t
take all the pain right now.”
The Bloomberg lawsuit said that 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.”
In response, the Fed argued that the trade-secret [law] could be expanded
to include potential harm to any of the central bank’s customers
. . . .
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
Trade secret law?
Trade secret law protects things like valuable business methods. What's
the banks' secret business method here - making stupid decisions, going
bankrupt and then becoming the recipient of socialist government handouts?
What's next? Will the government argue that it can't disclose the details
of its torture program because it needs to protect the trade secrets
of the companies that make the electro-shock machines and the waterboarding
platforms?
