And that’s the problem. The real point is, at this late hour, should we really be relying on guesses, anonymous sources, or a company spokesman’s word to know where Wall Street banks’ interest lie in the disposition of public funds to fill holes created by private companies?

Taxpayers, remember, now own AIG, and they own it precisely because of well-founded fears for the counterparties to the insurance contracts it clearly could not pay. There is no other reason. The U.S. Government accidentally got into the property/casualty business (and every other insurance line) only because of AIG’s unnamed counterparties who were exposed to some unknown degree of risk of losing some undisclosed amount of money that they willingly took on for their employees’ own excessive remuneration.

And taxpayers can’t even find out who these institutions are? They’re still squinting over news stories and parsing quotes from anonymous sources, none of whom has any real knowledge themselves? How’s that again?

This is not to mention the fact that taxpayers—you remember, those people with the stagnating median incomes for the last eight years—were forced to become unwilling shareholders in Goldman itself, along with eight other firms, only because no one else would do it on the same terms.

What we have here, Audit readers, is a classic transparency problem, without doubt. Whatever Goldman’s hedges were and whatever collateral it holds—down to the last security—should be disclosed for taxpayer inspection. Those are public records now.

At this point, the old business press/Wall Street rules—relying on anonymous sources to answer a basic question—should be thrown into a giant trash compactor.

The story of the battling sources shows how little we have learned and how deeply the Wall Street culture needs to change.

On the other hand, it also shows a way forward to restoring public confidence in the government, its bailout and the bailed out institutions:

Put it all online.

• 1
• 2