Per Bloomberg, Paulson and Bernanke have been dishing out roughly 2 TRILLION dollars to unknown recipients in the last couple months. That's right: 2 trillion from the Fed, which is far more than the 700 Billion approved by Congress. Bloomberg sued under FOIA for release of the names of these recipients. Jerome a Paris already discussed this explosive Bloomberg piece in a recommended diary two days ago.
While Democrats fret what to do about f-ing Joe Lieberman, John Boehner to his credit has called attention to this alarming disclosure. Sometimes leadership only comes from the powerless, since they have nothing to lose. Details below.
House Republican leader John Boehner called for the Federal Reserve to disclose the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers and the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Boehner, in a prepared statement, also asked the Federal Reserve to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request requesting details about the loans.
The Fed ``should comply with this Freedom of Information Act request, and in the interest of full and fair disclosure, they must begin providing lawmakers and taxpayers all information about how they are using federal tax dollars,'' Boehner said.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, there is little disclosure about how the programs are being implemented.
Source
Now don't get hissy, I'm sure Obama is working on this behind the scenes--he better be. But Congressional Dems have no excuse for being passive.
This is a really huge deal. We're seeing a massive, largely secret transfer of wealth in the last days of Bush. Bloomberg deserves props for publishing the story and filing its FOIA lawsuit, but it won't do any good if we just sit on ourlaurels and obsess about Lieberman, Palin, or whoever. The election is over, and the party is doing fine. Let's get down to business.