Bloomberg News sues FED

Wow! It will be fascinating to watch this unfold. In legal terms, you don't ask a question you don't already know the answer to, or at least have a vague idea. Something is up.

www.bloomberg.com...

Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg News asked a U.S. court today to force the Federal Reserve to disclose securities the central bank is accepting on behalf of American taxpayers as collateral for $1.5 trillion of loans to banks.

The lawsuit is based on the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, which requires federal agencies to make government documents available to the press and the public, according to the complaint. The suit, filed in New York, doesn't seek money damages.

``The American taxpayer is entitled to know the risks, costs and methodology associated with the unprecedented government bailout of the U.S. financial industry,'' said Matthew Winkler, the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, a unit of New York-based Bloomberg LP, in an e-mail.

The Fed has lent $1.5 trillion to banks, including Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., through programs such as its discount window, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility and the Term Securities Lending Facility. Collateral is an asset pledged to a lender in the event that a loan payment isn't made.

It all has come to the sorrowful state of affairs where a private company feels like looking after the taxpayers, because the corrupt Congress is too busy doing something else.

Now it's time for a trivia:

Originally posted by kosmicjack

The Fed has lent $1.5 trillion to banks, including Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., through programs such as its discount window, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility and the Term Securities Lending Facility. Collateral is an asset pledged to a lender in the event that a loan payment isn't made.

Who was the guy who posted this arguing comment?

This new bail out is actually the OFFICIAL PURCHASE OF MORTGAGE BACKED SECURITIES FROM BANKS TO THE MAXIMUM SUM OF 700 BILLION DOLLARS ALLOCATED TO THE INVESTMENTS AT ANY ONE TIME!

This is NOT a loan. This is not a Fire Sale. This is the official purchase of securities.

The answer is worth 700 billion ATS points. (Convertable to Zimbabwe dollars.)


[edit on 11/7/2008 by stander]

Wow that is good stuff. It is a sad day though that it takes a private company and mentioned above to do this instead of congress who we PAY to do this stuff. This country is Hi Jacked. Dont expect much out of Obama. He too has been bought out.

I think the reason bloomberg is trying to get this information is because it cant accurately report these things to its news subscribers unless they have the facts.

Doesn't Bloomberg know that the Fed is quasi-government (if that) and FOIA probably doesn't apply?

Doesn't Bloomberg know that the only way to get any info with any relevance to what it seeks, they will have to get a Congressional audit of the Federal Reserve? I wonder when was the last time that happened......

Sadly, I don't think this story will get anywhere.

[edit on 7-11-2008 by wutone]

reply to post by wutone

Each of the twelve Federal Reserve Banks is organized into a corporation whose shares are sold to the commercial banks and thrifts operating within the Bank's district. Shareholders elect six of the nine the board of directors for their regional Federal Reserve Bank as well as its president. Mullins reported that the top eight stockholders of the New York Fed were, in order from largest to smallest as of 1983, Citibank, Chase Manhatten, Morgan Guaranty Trust, Chemical Bank, Manufacturers Hanover Trust, Bankers Trust Company, National Bank of North America, and the Bank of New York (Mullins, p. 179). Together, these banks owned about 63 percent of the New York Fed's outstanding stock. Mullins then showed that many of these banks are owned by about a dozen European banking organizations, mostly British, and most notably the Rothschild banking dynasty. Through their American agents they are able to select the board of directors for the New York Fed and to direct U.S. monetary policy. Mullins explained,

'... The most powerful men in the United States were themselves answerable to another power, a foreign power, and a power which had been steadfastly seeking to extend its control over the young republic since its very inception. The power was the financial power of England, centered in the London Branch of the House of Rothschild. The fact was that in 1910, the United States was for all practical purposes being ruled from England, and so it is today' (Mullins, p. 47-48).

He further commented that the day the Federal Reserve Act was passed, "the Constitution ceased to be the governing covenant of the American people, and our liberties were handed over to a small group of international bankers" (Ibid, p. 29).

read full article here: Who Owns and Controls the Federal Reserve?

reply to post by stander


This is independant of the $850 Bil bailout. This is part of that ridiculous clearinghouse of fed loans that they started way the hell back in the first quarter of the year. You remember, the one that was systematically siphoning money off of the American taxpayer without too much hoopla or outrage until those mean old American citizens started to get worried and made runs on Wachovia and WaMu, forcing the government to immediately swoop in wearing their protective feathered codpiece of corporate socialism?

I applaud Bloomberg's efforts, but I have more than a few issues with it all. First and foremost is the idea that Bloomberg's CEO and founder doesn't already know exactly the whos, whats, wheres, and hows of any deals that go down inside the Fed. You do not get as rich or as powerful and Bloomberg is without being in the know on virtually everything that happens on the highest levels. So maybe the news outlet should send a few reporters to the NYC mayoral mansion to do a little interview with the Mayor. I also agree that, as a quasi private corporation, the Federal Reserve probably has legal wranglings it can call on to prevent anything it doesn't want the American people from learning about from us.

I'll tell you, I remember the first time, as a teenager, I really sat down and thought about the fact that the United States Postal Service was a private organization and not a federal one. I had always heard about the law regarding assault on a mail carrier being a federal offense. I had a friend who's dad was a UPS driver and had been punched in the face by a woman's ex-husband who was trying to force the guy to hand over a package addressed to his ex wife. It came to light that the worst that could happen to the ex husband was a simple assault charge, as the UPS is a private carrier service, and doesn't fall under the federal mail carrier blanket of protection.

It occurred to me at that time, for possibly the first time in my life (I was only like 13 or 14), that there exists in this country a hidden tier of power. A tier that sits above "normal" corporations, and just below the federal government in the grand scheme of things, but is shown to the common public as being fully on the level with the government, "our" government. It is a curious thing, kind of like reading that Pharoah's slave masters were, themselves, slaves. To the laboring, beaten slaves, all they saw when they looked at the guy cracking the whip at them was an extension of Pharoah, which was exactly what Pharoah wanted. Had one slave jumped up and shouted to the other slaves "Hey, the slave master is a slave just like us!" the fear would have lessened and the slave master's position of authority over the laboring slaves would have eroded. Yes, he'd have still held the same technical power he did before, but he wouldn't have held the intangibles and would have possibly even lost Pharoah's confidence, which could have lead to massive future problems for the slave master.

I see this the same way. The more American who know that the Federal Reserve is nothing more than the United States Postal Service, another entity presented as being on level with our Federal Government, but really nothing more than a glorified private corporation, the quicker we have a chance of seeing our government lose confidence and faith in it and the quicker we have a chance at eliminating it. Maybe that's why this bank bailout was pushed so forcefully down our throats. If the commercial banks had started failing, maybe someone would have stopped and wondered why the banking equivalent to my UPS vs USPS question almost 2 decades ago. "Why is one corporation being shielded while others are allowed to twist? Why is one corporation being presented to us as a federal agency when it is not?"

A little update

www.bloomberg.com... &refer=worldwide

The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Federal Reserve spokeswoman Michelle Smith declined to comment on the loans or the Bloomberg lawsuit. Treasury spokeswoman Michele Davis didn't respond to a phone call and an e-mail seeking comment.

President-elect Barack Obama's economic adviser, Jason Furman, also didn't respond to an e-mail and a phone call seeking comment from Obama. In a Sept. 22 campaign speech, Obama promised to ``make our government open and transparent so that anyone can ensure that our business is the people's business.''

Bloomberg is surprisingly pushy about this. Two Articles within a few days about the Fed makes me wonder what is going to happen to the editor and a few of their major shareholders.

politico's and bankers are afriad that revealing the poor quality of the collateral will ADD financial stress to the current situation from which they are trying to Subtract.

so the collateral is toxic crap we all know this, perhaps the editor at bloomberg wants the dollar to resume tanking or something

reply to post by burdman30ott6

I don't know. There are so many interests jockeying for the best position. Generally, the masses must be handled carefully, because when millions of people act in unison, it shows. You have to keep masses on the leash; you can't tell them everything otherwise they might rebel -- as it is known from history.

My guess is that Bloomberg wants to know more about the card game that Bernanke invented to troubleshoot the situation. Bloomberg wants to know how many cards are in the deck to see where the rescue effort leads to. Everyone knows that what Bernanke has designed was a calculated gamble. Bloomberg wants to know where things stand as time goes by in order to be prepared for the consequences of a possible failure. Bloomberg has customers and wants to serve them the best as possible, but without knowing where the money river flows, the company can't do much. That's probably why they sue.

I'm just curious about the case where Bloomberg succeeds at the court and gets the info it wants -- providing the Treasury keeps only one book. Who gets informed then?