The story of Bloomberg vs. The Fed nearing an end?

As the bailouts of 2008 & 2009 were beginning to ramp up,* Bloomberg News and the now-deceased Mark Pittman were hot on the case. They wanted answers to learn more about our tax dollars by asking such "tough" questions as:

Who got money from the Fed? How much did they get? In exchange for what collateral? And under what terms?

Of course, The Beast The Federal Reserve is pushing back hard. And who wouldn't? If information is power, how many people / organizations are comfortable relinquishing power? After all, Big Brother knows best!

In fairness though, the Fed does have legitimate concerns... just nothing credible enough for them to maintain their veil of secrecy... secrecy which began nearly a century ago:

The Federal Reserve has wrapped itself in secrecy since the turn of the 20th century, when a select group of financiers met at the private Jekyll Island Club off the eastern coast of Georgia and, forgoing last names to preserve their anonymity among the staff, drafted legislation to create a central bank.**

Its secrecy, of course, persists today, with Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, refusing to tell even Congress which banks received government money under the bailout. There is also a heated battle to force the Fed to disclose its role in the controversial attempt to save the insurance giant American International Group.

Of course, if you read this brilliant piece by David Fiderer, you'll get a sense of why the AIG bailout was so secret... because it was spearheaded by a bunch of corrupt public officials, such as Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner, along with their bosses, The Banksters.

Anyway, the reason for this NYTimes piece was not only to revisit the two year history of the Bloomberg FOIA lawsuit against The Federal Reserve... it was also to mention that the lawsuit to lift the veil of secrecy may be decided within a few weeks.

I hope the 2nd District Court of Appeals recognizes that the crime syndicate running the US Government does not represent the best interests of the American people. If it does, there's a good chance that the court will tell The Banksters to cough up the info.

It's our money. They have no moral authority to withhold that information.

Tim White

* I date them to March 2008 and the Bear Stearns bailout.

** This fact is central to much of America's modern day conspiracy theory.