Last Call

The Obama administration doesn't want you to know which banks are getting your tax dollars. There's a shocker.

The Federal Reserve asked a judge to delay enforcement of her decision requiring the central bank to identify companies in its emergency lending programs.

Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska in Manhattan said on Aug. 24 that the Fed had until Aug. 31 to disclose daily reports on borrowing by banks and other financial institutions. The central bank wants Preska to stay her order, made in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, until the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York can act on an appeal that the Fed said it intends to file.

The Fed and U.S. banks would suffer irreparable harm if details of the loan programs were made public, according to the central bank’s senior counsel, Yvonne Mizusawa.

The Clearing House Association LLC, an industry-owned group in New York that processes payments between banks, filed a declaration that accompanied the request for a stay.

“There are numerous examples of financially sound institutions collapsing or suffering further financial deterioration from the loss of public confidence,” Norman Nelson, vice president and general counsel for the group, said in the document.

Well gosh, that's because the banks are overestimating their loans by a trillion dollars or so and more than a hundred banks are in such bad shape that if it wasn't for accounting tricks and forbearance by the government, they'd effectively be insolvent. Just Monday we heard evidence that another 150-200 banks could fail before it's all over. A total of 81 banks have failed so far this year.

So yes, I think we deserve to know the truth about America's banks, since we effectively now own them as taxpayers, yes?