Fed Defies Transparency Aim in Refusal to Identify Bank Loans

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn’t require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

“The collateral is not being adequately disclosed, and that’s a big problem,” said Dan Fuss, vice chairman of Boston- based Loomis Sayles & Co., where he co-manages $17 billion in bonds. “n a liquid market, this wouldn’t matter, but we’re not. The market is very nervous and very thin.”

Bloomberg News has requested details of the Fed lending under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure.

The full article includes more Fed lies, Barney Frank hot air, and some info on the AIG bailout.

http://online.wsj.com/

WASHINGTON — A federal judge ruled Monday that a White House office that has records about millions of possibly missing emails doesn’t have to make them public.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly says the Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, enabling the White House to maintain the secrecy of a lengthy internal paper trail about its problem-plagued email system.

The decision came in a lawsuit filed against the administration by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a private group that has been trying to find out the extent of the White House’s email problems for more than a year. The functions of the Office of Administration “are strictly administrative,” Judge Kollar-Kotelly ruled.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly said the Office of Administration has no authority over others in the executive branch and that the office is exclusively dedicated to providing services to the Executive Office of the President.

Since its creation in 1978, the Office of Administration has responded to FOIA requests. But the Bush White House reversed that policy in August 2007 in the lawsuit filed by CREW.

http://www.cnn.com

In January, the White House said it cannot rule out that it may have lost certain e-mails. The possibly lost e-mails are from a period in which the United States decided to go to war with Iraq…

As if we needed another example of how inefficient and broken Washington is.

I certainly saw this ruling coming a mile away, just as I can see these “lost” emails mysteriously resurfacing some time after today’s events become a talking point in a US history book. There’s room for debate on whether or not the Office of Administration can be held subject to the Freedom of Information Act, but I think we can all agree that for what we’re paying Washington, this should never happen.