Bloomberg wins FOIA suit against Federal Reserve

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 | Economics |

Reuters - Federal Reserve loses suit demanding transparency:

A federal judge on Monday ruled against an effort by the U.S. Federal Reserve to block disclosure of companies that participated in and securities covered by a series of emergency funding programs as the global credit crisis began to intensify.

In a 47-page opinion, Chief District Judge Loretta Preska of the federal court in Manhattan said the central bank failed to show that disclosure would cause borrowers in the Federal Reserve System to suffer “imminent competitive harm,” by stigmatizing them for using Fed lending programs.

“The board essentially speculates on how a borrower might enter a downward spiral of financial instability if its participation in the Federal Reserve lending programs were to be disclosed,” she wrote. “Conjecture, without evidence of imminent harm, simply fails to meet the board’s burden.”

P.S. - Compare that story to this one, about Congress demanding to know salaries in the health insurance industry. Those are private companies. Congress has no business finding out what their employees make. Yet our government gave hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money to banks and doesn’t want us to know which banks got the taxpayer’s money or how much they got. The government wants transparency in private dealings that are none of their business and secrecy in government dealings with enormous public interest.

Tags: the fed