In an extraordinary ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Preska ordered the Federal Reserve to turn over records of the details concerning the lending of taxpayers’ money to financial institutions and banks.
The lawsuit was filed by Bloomberg LP, parent of the Bloomberg News division which sought to look over the documents detailing the actions of the Federal Reserve in dispersing up to $2 trillion in funds to numerous banking companies.
Some of the details sought by Bloomberg were what assets were put up by the banks, who the borrowers were, and how much the loans were.
We have to understand what the Federal Reserve and Ben Bernanke are saying here. They want to hide the weak banks from the public, who not only were fleeced of their future through the misguided Fed actions, but were kept in the dark as to whether their money was safe in the very institutions they were tapped to bail out. It’s really outrageous when you think of it.
The Fed is literally saying they don’t want a run on these weak banks by depositors. Why? The bottom line is they don’t like the idea of consumers holding true democratic power where they vote with their decisions on where they want to place their money. And when they find out who these weak banks or financial institutions are, darn right they should take their money out. Who is the Federal Reserve and under what authority do they decide the data and information we are allowed to see in order to make these decisions?
Under the Freedom of Information Act, Bloomberg based his case, and citing the judge said the Fed “improperly withheld agency records” by “conducting an inadequate search.” In other words, the Fed simply didn’t want to turn over the documents after finding them, and tried to leave it at that.
Per the ruling, Preska gave the Federal Reserve five days to turn the documents over to Bloomberg News reporters, who were told by the Fed long ago that they had found them. Because the Federal Reserve in New York operates most of the loan programs, the judge added they must do a more thorough search there for documents as well and turn them over.
If you’re not familiar with the history of the Federal Reserve, it’s hard to understand what has happened with this ruling, but it’s huge. We will get the first look at these types of workings within the Fed from the first time it was launched in 1913. It will only be a glimpse of their recent actions, but that should open up a crack which hopefully will lead to a full-fledged audit of the Federal Reserve based on the HR 1207 bill introduced by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who has a large, bipartisan group of 250 lawmakers that have cosponsored the bill.
At this time only portions of the actions of the Fed have to be disclosed by law.
But just with this ruling we will be able to see what the outrageous bailout was specifically aimed at, and which banks can be considered safe to do business with. This is groundbreaking and far overdue.
