What Do You Have To Hide?
Bloomberg sues the Fed for refusing to disclose what sort of collateral they are lending against. I come at this from having worked in insurance for two decades. Insurers have to disclose every asset that they own in their Statutory filings. When I looked at a bank’s call report recently, I was surprised to see only summary data available. The insurance industry has high disclosure, and it hasn’t hurt them. Why should the Fed cower, and refuse to reveal what they are lending against? Five possibilities, and none of them good:
- The Fed is breaking its own rules, and lending on collateral that it publicly said that it wouldn’t lend against.
- They are playing favorites with institutions, and don’t want that to be revealed.
- The assets in question are technically in compliance with the rules of the Fed, but are worth far less than the amount loaned against them.
- Certain banks would be embarrassed by revealing what they own.
- It’s just a power game, and the Fed thinks it is above the law, particularly during a crisis (that it helped to cause).
For another example, I would be happy to see who they are lending to in their CPFF program. Are they lending a lot to AIG through CP? Anyone else notice that AIG is A-/A3 from S&P and Moody’s which would make them A-2/P-2, and ineligible for the Fed to lend to, but S&P and Moody’s still have them at A-1/P-1. Weird.
In my opinion, there is no good reason why the Fed can’t disclose the collateral, and the institutions involved. They assure us that they are being upright and prudent; let them prove it.
November 8th, 20089:18 am at
I don’t get the problem.
What is the matter with you guys?
And gals.
The Congress has authorized the Federal Reserve Bank, a private corporation, to borrow money, guaranteed to be repaid by the taxpayers, and to lend that money to another private corporation.
That private corporation borrowing that money may or may not pay that money back to the private corporation known as the FED.
If that money is not paid back to the FED, then it is paid back by the taxpayer.
The entire public role here is the authorization for the private corporations to have their hands in the pockets of the taxpayers.
And, if that ain’t fascism, then I don’t know what is.
It’s just plain old vanilla fascism.
What is the problem with that?
November 8th, 20089:35 pm at
I agree, The Fed is giving fascism a bad name! Maybe Obama can change that….
November 14th, 20087:10 am at
Bailouts Must Be Odious…
David Merkel submits: There has been a significant shift in bailout psychology over the last week or two. The grand shift has been to make the cost of receiving money from the U.S .government smaller, which gets “banks” to line up for…
November 23rd, 20089:42 am at
Is there an update on the Bloomberg suit?
The story looks to be buried?
What’s going on?
November 24th, 200812:11 pm at
I’m on the case — I have Bloomberg Law tracking the the legal docket for me, and I have a Googlebot set up. The Governors of the Fed have been summoned by the Southern New York District Court, they have to appear (by proxy probably) by 12/7/08.
Judge Loretta Preska has the case.