Federal Reserve Appeals Court Order to Disclose Loans

[Ladywriter 7,783]

By Mark Pittman

Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve filed a notice it will appeal a judge’s order requiring the central bank to identify the companies that benefited from its emergency loans.

The filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York today was authorized by Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the Obama administration’s top courtroom lawyer, according to Charles Miller, a spokesman for Kagan.

“Public disclosure is likely to cause substantial competitive injury to these financial institutions including the loss of public confidence in the institution, runs on banks and possible failure of some institutions,” the Fed said in its notice, which asks to put the lower court’s order on hold until the appeal is prepared.

I can see what the concern is but we have a right to know where that money went and who was reckless enough to need that kind of cash to begin with. We should be allowed to make informed decisions about where and with who we do business.

“One way or the other, the Fed is going to have to come clean,” Representative Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, said today in a statement delivered through his spokesman, Matt Stoller. Grayson helps oversee bailout programs as a member of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee.

“There is not a single American who does not have a stake in how the Federal Reserve and other major banks operate,” Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington, Virginia-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said an interview. “To deny American taxpayers simple information about how their money was used and by whom is inexcusable.”

The Fed last year began extending credit directly to companies that aren’t banks for the first time since it was created in 1913 to manage the nation’s monetary policy. It has refused to divulge details about the companies participating in 10 lending programs, saying that doing so might set off a run by depositors and unsettle shareholders.