US Fed to release crisis bailout data

© AFP/File Karen Bleier

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Federal Reserve said Monday it would release data on its emergency aid to banks after the Supreme Court rejected arguments to keep it secret.

The Supreme Court declined to review a ruling that forces the Fed to publish the names of banks that borrowed from its discount window in April and May 2008, months before the industry fell into a panic.
The discount window is a Fed facility banks can tap for short-term financing when they experience liquidity shortages, as some did when financial markets began to crumble with the housing market crash.

The Supreme Court's decision effectively backed a request by the Bloomberg news agency and Fox News television to make the data on the Fed's bailout moves public, despite banks and the Fed arguing this could damage perceptions of their stability.

According to the decision, the Fed will have to reveal within five days the names of the banks which received discount window loans, along with the amount, the term, and the counterparty guarantees for the loans.

"The board will fully comply with the courts' decisions and is preparing to make the information available. Some of the information relating to emergency credit facilities was already released on December 1," Fed spokesman David Skidmore said.

The Fed had refused to reveal the information, on the grounds that it could erode public confidence in the specific institutions involved and create more difficulties for the struggling finance sector.

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license

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Supreme Court Rules The Fed Has 5 Days to Release Records to Bloomberg

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Zero Hedge

In a crushing blow against the Fed and the banks that own it, in this case represented by the Clearing House Association, the Supreme Court rejected an industry appeal set forth by the CHA, that sought to keep critical bailout data from going public. The lawsuit was originally started by the great and late Mark Pittman, who tragically passed away around Thanksgiving 2009: we are confident we would be delighted to learn that his unprecedented act of suing the Fed in order to generate more transparency has finally succeeded.

From Bloomberg:

The justices today left intact a court order that gives the Fed five days to release the records, sought by Bloomberg News’s parent company, Bloomberg LP. The Clearing House Association LLC, a group of the nation’s largest commercial banks, had asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

The order marks the first time a court has forced the Fed to reveal the names of banks that borrowed from its oldest lending program, the 98-year-old discount window. The disclosures, together with details of six bailout programs released by the central bank in December under a congressional mandate, would give taxpayers insight into the Fed’s unprecedented $3.5 trillion effort to stem the 2008 financial panic. 

“I can’t recall that the Fed was ever sued and forced to release information” in its 98-year history, said Allan H. Meltzer, the author of three books on the U.S central bank and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

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