Another major victory: Fed to release Recipients Name of $3.3 Trillion in Emergency Aid

Sorry, not much time to write this post. Here's the big news:

Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve, under orders from Congress, plans today to identify recipients of $3.3 trillion in emergency aid the central bank provided as it fought the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed intends to post the data on its website at midday in Washington to comply with a provision in July’s Dodd-Frank law overhauling financial regulation. The information spans six loan programs as well as currency swaps with other central banks, purchases of mortgage-backed securities and the rescues of Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc.

The disclosures may heighten political scrutiny of the central bank already at its most intense in three decades. The Fed’s Nov. 3 decision to add $600 billion of monetary stimulus has met with backlash from top Republicans in Congress, who said in a Nov. 17 letter to Chairman Ben S. Bernanke that the action risks inflation and asset-price bubbles.

“It is quite conceivable it is going to stir up the political pot,” said Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at Jefferies & Co. Inc. in New York. “But political criticism isn’t going to prevent them from doing what they need to do. An important part of being a Fed official is to understand whatever you do is going to come under scrutiny.”

This is new and would have never happened just 4 years ago.

The data will probably show the magnitude of central bank support to companies including Bank of America Corp. and General Electric Co. after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. spurred a surge in private borrowing costs. Lawmakers demanded disclosure after the Fed approved aid dwarfing the federal government’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Congress excluded one Fed program from disclosure, the discount window, which is the subject of a 2008 lawsuit filed by Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News, against the central bank. A group of banks is appealing to the Supreme Court over lower-court decisions ordering the Fed to identify loan recipients. The program peaked at $110.7 billion in October 2008.

“We see this not as the end of a process but really a significant step forward in opening the veil of secrecy that exists in one of the most powerful agencies in government,” Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont Independent who wrote the provision on Fed disclosure, said to reporters Nov. 17.

The Fed is now under attack and they know that they will be under scrutiny every time they act. There are internal conflicts at the board as well. We are getting closer and closer to a standstill and crippling of the Fed. This is the right track, and hopefully, soon, the People will be able to Audit the Fed, then End it.