Bloomberg had to get a Supreme Court ruling to get the Federal Reserve to turn over 29,000documents on the 2008/9 big bank bailouts. Slowly, journalists are finding out what happened. They are also finding out why the FED refused to turn them over, as required by the FOIA law. MarketWatch reports:
The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.
Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.
There is more. Much more. It all points to the same thing: the FED took care of the big banks, as it always has and always does.
The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he “wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.
“TARP at least had some strings attached,” says Brad Miller, a North Carolina Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, referring to the program’s executive-pay ceiling. “With the Fed programs, there was nothing.”
It was all done in such a way that the big banks could deceive their investors.
Bankers didn’t disclose the extent of their borrowing. On Nov. 26, 2008, then-Bank of America (BAC) Corp. Chief Executive Officer Kenneth D. Lewis wrote to shareholders that he headed “one of the strongest and most stable major banks in the world.” He didn’t say that his Charlotte, North Carolina-based firm owed the central bank $86 billion that day.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon told shareholders in a March 26, 2010, letter that his bank used the Fed’s Term Auction Facility “at the request of the Federal Reserve to help motivate others to use the system.” He didn’t say that the New York-based bank’s total TAF borrowings were almost twice its cash holdings or that its peak borrowing of $48 billion on Feb. 26, 2009, came more than a year after the program’s creation.
Americans like to presume that this cannot happen again, that the banking system is still solvent. But the FED still remains the back-up, creating money and issuing guarantees in secret. It’s a trillion-dollar old boys network.
The Tea Party, which supports a more limited role for government, has its roots in anger over the Wall Street bailouts, says Neil M. Barofsky, former TARP special inspector general and a Bloomberg Television contributing editor.
“The lack of transparency is not just frustrating; it really blocked accountability,” Barofsky says. “When people don’t know the details, they fill in the blanks. They believe in conspiracies.”
You bet we do. That’s because there are conspiracies, and these papers prove it.
Maybe ole barney and his lib dem cronies will end up behind BARS like they deserve yet!
This present government will go down in history as the most corrupt in the history of the world. We have been lied to for years. We are on the brink of a total communist or dictator take over, and congress sits on their hands and acts like the 3 monkeys that see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil, If obama is reelected there is no hope for this country. GOD help this country,please.
it is now a "DEN OF THIEVES"!
EVIL men and women deceiving and being deceived!
selling their souls and bowing to mammon.
MARXIST DIALECTICS… ANYONE?
TYRANNICAL CAPITALISM (what do "they" think we are – OXYMORONS?)
welcome to THE NEW WORLD ORDER (the most heinous tyranny humankind WILL ever know!)
Well thank you Nancy, Barne, and Harry without the bail out Nancy and her husband could not have made the money thay made off of bank stock, and the rest of congress also did the same but all will lie about it. Need to Jail all of them and the President and exicute them by sun down.
An we see this sight has some of the ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN aspects to censorship. Not wanting the truth out to the public as written but as they see fit to let the public view. What a bunch of hipacripts
Yes I posted 2 commets and they haven't been posted whats the problem
it is now a "DEN OF THIEVES"!
deceiving and being deceived!
watch for more and more global leaders(?) to call for a centralized (global) government in order for the global economy of economies to work – the UNITED STATES OF EUROPE, and, no doubt, the soon called for UNITED STATES OF THE WORLD! (no more sovereign nations or free citizens… only ABSOLUTE POWER for the mammon loving elite… and you know what that does!)
MARXISTS DIALECTICS ….anyone?
TYRANNICAL CAPITALISM? (what do "they" think we are – OXYMORONS?)
welcome to the NEW WORLD ORDER….the most corrupt and heinous tyranny humankind WILL ever know!
Some one needs to go to jail on this.
I don't care what party or what office, every one connected with this needs to go to jail
it is now a "DEN OF THIEVES"!
All part of the communist / socialists plans to destroy the USA. What a sorry group these traitors are. I'd be willing to bet their guts are rotting away.
This is one of the many reasons we must get out of the UN.
These people have no feelings of remorse. They are the lowest of the low life's.
All on Obama's Watch, the hemmoraging of money has not ceased and will not as long as he is President!
GOO – GET OBAMA OUT!
The Godfather of the Tea Party is and has been leading the charge to Audit the FED and if we have the good sense to Elect the electable Ron Paul. Then I believe that once he is President he will suceed in auditing lthe FED and some how end the FED. He'll also cut the deficit the 1st year in office and balance the bucget in 3. Doctor Ron Paul will only accept 10 % of his Preslidental salary as well
H has to go!
I believe when it's all said and done, we should put a bounty on each and every appointee that deceived the American tax payer. We should post all of their pictures on store front windows. We can create job growth by taking applications for Bounty Hunters. I for one will submit my resume. The Bounty Hunter will have an expense card for when he has to travel to foreign countries to hunt down the runners. Of course the Hunter will be required to fill out an expense report so we keep this program clean and honest. Absolutely no lawyers, government employees or former politicians need apply, only honest tax paying citizens. All money recovered will go back to the America Tax Payer Fund. Once we have exterminated all of the trash then the Bounty Hunters can focus on the lying dirt bags collecting Social Security Disability. We can create a lot of useful, good programs that will actually benefit the working class. We will have plenty of money since we will abolish the FDA, EPA and most of the other programs that end in “A”.