Bloomberg has filed a lawsuit again the Federal government using the Freedom on Information Act. The Freedom of Information Act obliges federal agencies to make government documents available to the press and public. The Bloomberg lawsuit, filed in New York, doesn’t seek money damages. The Feds have responded that the information that is being requested apparently has some kind of 'magic powers' saying that they are allowed to withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information.
Wow really? Is this like 'Executive Privilege' for the Federal Reserve and our Treasury Department, because I sure as hell never recall any kind of 'protection of trade secrets and commercial information.' As a matter of fact, we, the tax payers (aka: The Fools and Lowly Serfs) were told that there would be 'Strict Oversight' of every single penny by our honest, loyal, hardworking, dedicated leaders. So now not only are the Feds telling Bloomberg, but the rest of the world: It's too DANGEROUS FOR YOU TO KNOW WHERE THE MONEY WENT/IS...IS/NOT. A bit more information below the fold. http://
In response to Bloomberg’s request, the Fed said the U.S. is facing "an unprecedented crisis" in which "loss in confidence in and between financial institutions can occur with lightning speed and devastating effects." The Fed supplied copies of three e-mails in response to a request that it disclose the identities of those supplying data on collateral as well as their contracts. While the senders and recipients of the messages were revealed, the contents were erased except for two phrases identifying a vendor as "IDC." One of the e-mails’ subject lines refers to "Interactive Data -- Auction Rate Security Advisory May 1, 2008."
Jennifer J. Johnson, the secretary for the Fed’s Board of Governors, said in a letter e-mailed to Bloomberg News. "In its considered judgment and in view of current circumstances, it would be a dangerous step to release this otherwise confidential information," she wrote. New York-based Citigroup Inc., which is shrinking its global workforce of 352,000 through asset sales and job cuts, is among the nine biggest banks receiving $125 billion in capital from the TARP since it was signed into law Oct. 3. More than 170 regional lenders are seeking an additional $74 billion.
The Fed’s five-page response to Bloomberg may be "unprecedented" because the board usually doesn’t go into such detail about its position, said Lee Levine, a partner at Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz LLP in Washington."This is uncharted territory," said Levine during an interview from his New York office. "The Freedom of Information Act wasn’t built to anticipate this situation and that’s evident from the way the Fed tried to shoehorn their argument into the trade-secrets exemption." "If they told us what they held, we would know the potential losses that the government may take and that’s what they don’t want us to know," said Carlos Mendez, a senior managing director at New York-based ICP Capital LLC, which oversees $22 billion in assets. "Americans don’t want to get blindsided anymore," Mendez said in an interview. "They don’t want it sugarcoated or whitewashed. They want the complete truth. The truth is we can’t take all the pain right now." The Bloomberg lawsuit said the collateral lists "are central to understanding and assessing the government’s response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression." In response, the Fed argued that the trade-secret exemption could be expanded to include potential harm to any of the central bank’s customers, said Bruce Johnson, a lawyer at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in Seattle. That expansion is not contained in the freedom-of-information law, Johnson said.
Well, it is obvious to me that the Feds are buying time to cook the books to hide 2 trillion dollars, or they are trying to figure out a way to make certain that they can 'cover their tracks' and/or the United States is without a doubt already in such deep shit (on the verge of a total financial meltdown) that what they are really doing is simply buying time until they can just steal the money, and then hand the entire mess over to President Obama. Of course the Freedom of Information Act wasn't built for the Feds to hide "OUR FUCKING MONEY" that we were told was 'Saving us all from disaster and keeping the USA from going over the cliff'...remember that 'sky is falling' week before the bail out?
How in the hell do you hide 2 trillion dollars? How in god's name are these ass hat crooks getting away with being able to hide behind the Freedom of Information Act when we have been told over and over again that we would have full transparency?
And why do I feel like I'm living in Russia and that the KBG and Putin will be knocking at my door sooner than expected? What the ever loving hell ever happened to all of us Americans that we are sitting here now watching day in and day out two trillion dollars go off to banana land never to be seen again? Two trillion dollars....oh my god. Is that enough money to go all the way to the moon if you lay the dollars touching each other? (Consider this a special math question for all the beautiful cute math geeks out there).
Where is my god dam money? You know this is like watching 'death on a cracker'... they are just waiting to throw this country and Obama to the wolves and run out the door. Otherwise, don't you think we'd know where the hell the money is by now? Apparently the banks oppose any release of the 'Strictly Hidden Oversight Money" information because that might signal a weakness and spur short-selling or a run on depositors.
Oh, really? You mean like on January 21, 2009? I mean, these people may think their fooling some of the people some of the time, but they sure as hell are not fooling me. They are waiting to dump the crime on the century on to Obama's lap and sit back and wait as people run to the bank for their money. Otherwise, tell me, don't you think that we would have at least one tiny, itty bitty report on this money YET? But instead, they are refusing to give the report up, choosing to hide behind the Freedom of Information Act, which is completely outrageous and has never been used to 'hide financial information' from the taxpayers, who happen to own every single dime they are stealing from under our noses.