Federal Reserve Gets Beat Again
It looks like the Federal Reserve is on its last leg in its ongoing attempt to block the public from seeing which banks were bailed out, for how much, and how precarious the individual banks' situations were. The U.S. Court of Appeals in New York refused to review the ruling by a lower court forcing the Fed to disclose the information. Without a stay, the Federal Reserve will have to publish the documents by Friday.
If they get the stay, the Fed can appeal the case to the Supreme Court. Even if they're successful in receiving a stay, they only have 90 days to request a Supreme Court ruling, and I'd be surprised (but not astounded) if that ruling went in their favor. In other words, the truth will set us free.
"The decision is of exceptional importance," the Fed's lawyers wrote in a legal brief on May 4 in which they asked the circuit court to reconsider the decision. "The real-world consequence of the panel's decision will be serious, perhaps irreparable harm to the institutional borrowers whose information will be revealed."
Fuckin'-A, I hope so. A guy like me thinks bad business decisions should have been allowed to do serious, perhaps irreparable harm to the institutional borrowers who made them. It's about time these losers were named and shamed.
Incidentally, I don't expect the Federal Reserve to ever comply with this court order, even if it's upheld by the Supreme Court. They're above the law, and they know it.
I know I've asked this before, but I've never received a good answer. What is the worst that can happen if the Fed is forced to reveal this data? Is the whole world going to suddenly realize that Citi is a POS? Seriously, can somebody give me a good reason for the stonewalling?
Comments
I never like the government
I never like the government refusing to expose information especially when no human lives are at stake. MAKE IT PUBLIC!
Yours truly,
The Young Investor
I don't think it should
I don't think it should reveal it yet tbh. Should wait at least another year. Secret bailouts means that the confidence in the business is maintained. Over here in the UK the bank of England provided loans secretly to some major banks which meant that they weren't forced to nearly collapse unlike the previous ones which got the loans publicly. Althoug saying that the secret loans were made public a lot sooner than how much the fed would like
And the "Federal Reserve is
And the "Federal Reserve is Privately Owned" conspiracy crowd gets more ammunition!
Work hard, play hard.
Agree with loki276, think
Agree with loki276, think they should wait at least another year before disclosing the information. The reason is that I believe it might be a bit counterproductive having provided that bailout money only to inflict damage to these institutions' reputation now when they are starting to do slightly better by disclosing who took what and how much etc. That being said, I def agree that they should reveal it at some specified time in the future, people have the right to know how that money was allocated/used.
These are US taxpayer
These are US taxpayer dollars, the information should have been released when they took the funds.
~If money could talk, it would say "goodbye".
That will further fuck up the
That will further fuck up the DJI when released 8000 by next week
"Climbing a mountain that's only getting steeper"
-Barboon
Haywood J'Ablowme
These are US taxpayer dollars, the information should have been released when they took the funds.
But than the US taxpayer would have to do another bailout as markets would lose confidence in the institutions that were bailed out privately
^^^^^ what I just said in
^^^^^ what I just said in different words
"Climbing a mountain that's only getting steeper"
-Barboon
barboon wrote: ^^^^^ what I
^^^^^ what I just said in different words
tbf it was posted at exactly the same time
The Young Investor wrote: I
I never like the government refusing to expose information especially when no human lives are at stake. MAKE IT PUBLIC!
Much agreement.
I am not cocky, I am confident, and when you tell me I am the best it is a compliment.
-Styles P
I'm all about naming and
I'm all about naming and shaming, but if revealing such information would really could cause "irreparable harm to the institutional borrowers whose information will be revealed" then maybe the Fed has pretty logical reasoning here. I think with the markets the way they currently are, now is not the time to name and shame. Maybe in say, 10 years??
Sometimes what we don't know can't hurt us.
loki276 wrote: Haywood
These are US taxpayer dollars, the information should have been released when they took the funds.
But than the US taxpayer would have to do another bailout as markets would lose confidence in the institutions that were bailed out privately
No bail outs, let bad business fail... the banks were privately proped up to save them from being bought at a steep discount, if citi was not bought by the fed, it might have been bought by a foriegn country, which would have been amusing...does capitalism still exist?
~If money could talk, it would say "goodbye".
Haywood, the traditional form
Haywood, the traditional form of capitalism is focused around a large number of small, but competitive firms. This is not capitalism. Banks simply get bigger and bigger, to ensure safety. After all if you are big to fail, then you get bailed out if in trouble. Until you get too big and then the dominos fall down. There is a certain tipping point for all levels of structure (whether business or political) where an increasing level of size and complexity brings you down as innovation is choked out.
Haywood, the traditional form
Haywood, the traditional form of capitalism is focused around a large number of small, but competitive firms. This is not capitalism. Banks simply get bigger and bigger, to ensure safety. After all if you are big to fail, then you get bailed out if in trouble. Until you get too big and then the dominos fall down. There is a certain tipping point for all levels of structure (whether business or political) where an increasing level of size and complexity brings you down as innovation is choked out.
Haywood J'Ablowme
These are US taxpayer dollars, the information should have been released when they took the funds.
But than the US taxpayer would have to do another bailout as markets would lose confidence in the institutions that were bailed out privately
No bail outs, let bad business fail... the banks were privately proped up to save them from being bought at a steep discount, if citi was not bought by the fed, it might have been bought by a foriegn country, which would have been amusing...does capitalism still exist?
No it doesn't. True capitalism can only exist in smaller communities. Just like true communism can only exist in smaller communities.
Think this through of why the bailouts were needed. (as explained by the head of GES(government economic service in uk) about a month ago will try my best to remember all of it)
Years ago gold was the main currency. People used to carry around gold with them when they needed to buy something. But gold was heavy. Therefore a clever idea was thought of. Why not store gold at a place at in return for that gold you get a paper which stated how much gold you had stored at the "bank", These notes were interchangeable and so many people started using them. Because most people used these whenever you bought something, you didn't go and get the gold from the "bank". Therefore "banks" started issuing out more of this paper currency than they actually had. The theory behind this was that you didn't really need to give out all the gold at one time because the paper currency was being traded. So in essence more gold was being traded than actually existed.
Come forward to 2007 and the theory is still in place. Banks only need to have a certain amount of assets for the liabilities they have. The problem was in 2007 that assets are usually linked. So Bank A has assets which are linked in one way or another to Bank B. Now when these assets become toxic they have to be removed quickly in this case the toxic assets were sub-prime mortgages. Say in Bank A most of these assets were the sub-prime mortgage but Bank B didn't. In theory if you let bank A fall it will have no repercussions at all for Bank B. But in reality they are almost always linked. Banks around the world are linked so even if one massive bank such as Citi were to fail the results would almost be catastrophic. So you let on business fail but in doing so cos they are so fucking massive you probably turn a lot more assets into toxic ones. Even bailing them out publicly means that you have to do a greater bail-out as the markets lose confidence. By doing some bail-outs in private means that the tax-payer has to put up less money. And if no bail-out was done than we would have probably seem a much greater collapse. I don't know about the US but in the UK all deposits are covered for the first £50,000 if there was a total collapse which probably would have occurred if the banks weren't bailed-out than I think the costs of giving money back to depositors would have probably been greater than the bail-out. The federal Reserve in the US and Bank of England in the UK had to step in because if they hadn't we might have ended up in a depression which we may still end up doing. Personally speaking I think Banks should be forced to have more assets in gold.
Listen, I am all for freedom
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^^^Happened to northern rock
@loki - agreed partially.