The largest commercial banks in the U.S. are ready to go all
the way to the Supreme Court to block the public release of
details pertaining to the Federal Reserve's 2008 secretive $2
trillion bailout.
Bloomberg
News reports that The Clearing House Association
LLC, a group that includes Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan
Chase & Co., have teamed with the Fed to rally against a
lawsuit, brought by Bloomberg itself, to disclose records of
the Fed's emergency lending.
The fight for disclosure has been ongoing following the Fed's
failure to comply with congressional demands for transparency.
A New York District ruling last August declared that the destination
of around $2 trillion dollars in bailout funds must be revealed
after the Fed failed to convince the Judge that the records
should be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
Citing the fact that the US taxpayer is an “involuntary
investor” in the nation’s banks, Bloomberg argued
that the risks behind the $2 trillion in lending needed to be
made public.
Following more stalling, a further ruling by the U.S. Court
of Appeals in Manhattan on March 19 ordered the central bank
to release the documents. The Fed once again argued that disclosure
would be harmful to its independence, would stigmatize borrowers
and discourage banks from seeking further emergency help.
"Our member banks are very concerned about real-time disclosure
of information that could cause a run on the banks,” said
Paul Saltzman, the group of bank's general counsel, in an interview
yesterday. “We’re not going to let the Second Circuit
opinion stand without seeking a review."
If the appeal for a review is turned down, the bank group will
then petition the Supreme Court, Saltzman added.
Banks incorporated by the New York-based Clearing House group
also include Citigroup Inc., Bank of New York Mellon Corp.,
Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, PNC Financial Services
Group Inc., UBS AG, U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo & Co.
The Fed Board of Governors’ "refusal to disclose
the names of borrowers renders public oversight of its actions
impossible -- it prevents any assessment of the effectiveness
of the Board’s actions and conceals any collusion, corruption,
fraud or abuse that might have occurred," Bloomberg states
in a letter to the appeals panel.
The amount of US taxpayer money committed to bailouts since
2007 is thought to be close
to $25 trillion. The figures by far exceed the
combined cost
of major historical events, accounting for inflation,
dating back over 200 years.
Taxpayers have been left completely in the dark as to who has
received the money and what they are doing with it.
The public has watched in disbelief for close to eighteen months
as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has arrogantly refused
to state where any of the bailout money has gone,
despite repeated questioning during Congressional and Senate
hearings.
There is no accounting for the spending. The Federal Reserve,
which is owned and run for the most part by European banking
elites, has never been audited and is accountable to no one,
as former chairman Alan Greenspan has explained:
It comes as little surprise that the offshore bankers who continue
to benefit from the looting of the U.S. economy would support
Fed secrecy.
All this following Paulson's monumental “bait and switch”
when he deceived Congress into passing the bailout bill under
the proviso that the $750 billion dollar package would be used
to purchase toxic debt, when in fact it was used to bail out
failing financial institutions.
A monolithic private corporation and a gaggle of bastard banker
children sucking on its teat, have effectively gobbled up trillions
plus in taxpayers’ money and figuratively stuck the middle
finger up regarding questions over where that money has gone.
Quite inconceivably this outright theft has been termed a "rescue",
yet it has had no effect whatsoever other than to actually increase
the severity of the financial downturn, allowing the same elites
to exploit the crisis as a pretext for centralizing control
of the world economic system.
Save for Ron Paul's Federal Reserve Transparency bill, America's
elected representatives have laid down to the Fed, with the
Washington elite even attempting
protecting the Fed from any real examination.
The largest commercial banks in the U.S. are ready to go all
the way to the Supreme Court to block the public release of
details pertaining to the Federal Reserve's 2008 secretive $2
trillion bailout.
