Bloomberg News honcho Matthew Winkler has an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal bringing us up to date on the progress of the outfit’s valiant Freedom of Information Act suit seeking the Federal Reserve Bank’s loan records:
The Fed says taxpayers don’t have the right to know these things. What’s more, it went to court to resist giving an accounting of its actions…
Last month, Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska in Manhattan disagreed with the Fed. In a 47-page ruling, she found that the facts and the law require the central bank to release its lending records. The Fed is now considering whether to appeal her ruling.
The Fed says it can’t give up the documents without stigmatizing banks and frightening customers into yanking their deposits. There is no evidence to support such an assertion, and recent events show that the opposite is true…
Since its creation in 1913, the Fed has been the watchdog over our money. Now it is running interference for banks that borrowed our money, and went so far as to insist to a federal judge that the public shouldn’t worry about what it does with our money.
Read the whole thing. And good luck in court, Bloomberg.
