Typical response from someone who refuses to

• Obama campaign gave over 800K dollars - to ACORN, a very corrupt organization...nm
  • Source please. nm - MQMT
    • Well, they're everywhere but I'll give you this... - sm
    • Here is one... - sam
      • Pittsburgh entertainment? nm - MQMT
        • Well, if you don't like that one you could always - sm
        • If you really cared about the truth, you could find... - sam
          • arrogant? - nm
            • I don't think she's arrogant but pointing out the - fact that dumb dems do lazy.......nm
          • You are the one who put forth the site to foster your belief. It ...sm - MQMT
            • Foster her belief????? - not so..........sm
            • It was not a dead end. The information was there... - sam
              • ride 'em cowboy! - nm
                • Like my teacher used to say, if you have nothing worth - adding, then sit and shut up....nm
              • If they don't like the message, they blame the - messenger.......plain and simple......nm
  • Old news -- instead of trash-talking Obama - why not tell us what McCain will do for the public
    • Initiatives..........????? - sm
      • typical pub response -- sidestep the question - and answer your own question instead
        • You need to do your homework......actually - educate yourself........sm
          • what I can't understand is... - cbr
            • I call, fax, and call again and I do campaign.... - nm
            • I am sure some do. I do. nm - sam
        • Sorry dear to disappoint you but I'm not a - pub......just don't want a crook in there. nm
        • Typical response from someone who refuses to - hear the truth........nm

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(Okay.  Everyone in Congress and the White House, empty your pockets.)

Fed Refuses to Disclose Recipients of $2 Trillion (Update1)

By Mark Pittman

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed responded Dec. 8, saying it's allowed to withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information. The institution confirmed that a records search found 231 pages of documents pertaining to some of the requests.

"If they told us what they held, we would know the potential losses that the government may take and that's what they don't want us to know," said Carlos Mendez, a senior managing director at New York-based ICP Capital LLC, which oversees $22 billion in assets.

The Fed stepped into a rescue role that was the original purpose of the Treasury's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. The central bank loans don't have the oversight safeguards that Congress imposed upon the TARP.

Total Fed lending exceeded $2 trillion for the first time Nov. 6. It rose by 138 percent, or $1.23 trillion, in the 12 weeks since Sept. 14, when central bank governors relaxed collateral standards to accept securities that weren't rated AAA.

'Been Bamboozled'

Congress is demanding more transparency from the Fed and Treasury on bailout, most recently during Dec. 10 hearings by the House Financial Services committee when Representative David Scott, a Georgia Democrat, said Americans had "been bamboozled."

Bloomberg News, a unit of New York-based Bloomberg LP, on May 21 asked the Fed to provide data on collateral posted from April 4 to May 20. The central bank said on June 19 that it needed until July 3 to search documents and determine whether it would make them public. Bloomberg didn't receive a formal response that would let it file an appeal within the legal time limit.

On Oct. 25, Bloomberg filed another request, expanding the range of when the collateral was posted. It filed suit Nov. 7.

In response to Bloomberg's request, the Fed said the U.S. is facing "an unprecedented crisis" in which "loss in confidence in and between financial institutions can occur with lightning speed and devastating effects."

Data Provider

The Fed supplied copies of three e-mails in response to a request that it disclose the identities of those supplying data on collateral as well as their contracts.

While the senders and recipients of the messages were revealed, the contents were erased except for two phrases identifying a vendor as "IDC." One of the e-mails' subject lines refers to "Interactive Data -- Auction Rate Security Advisory May 1, 2008."

Brian Willinsky, a spokesman for Bedford, Massachusetts- based Interactive Data Corp., a seller of fixed-income securities information, declined to comment.

"Notwithstanding calls for enhanced transparency, the Board must protect against the substantial, multiple harms that might result from disclosure," Jennifer J. Johnson, the secretary for the Fed's Board of Governors, said in a letter e-mailed to Bloomberg News.

'Dangerous Step'

"In its considered judgment and in view of current circumstances, it would be a dangerous step to release this otherwise confidential information," she wrote.

New York-based Citigroup Inc., which is shrinking its global workforce of 352,000 through asset sales and job cuts, is among the nine biggest banks receiving $125 billion in capital from the TARP since it was signed into law Oct. 3. More than 170 regional lenders are seeking an additional $74 billion.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would meet congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system.

The Freedom of Information Act obliges federal agencies to make government documents available to the press and public. The Bloomberg lawsuit, filed in New York, doesn't seek money damages.

'Right to Know'

"There has to be something they can tell the public because we have a right to know what they are doing," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington, Virginia-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

"It would really be a shame if we have to find this out 10 years from now after some really nasty class-action suit and our financial system has completely collapsed," she said.

The Fed lent cash and government bonds to banks that handed over collateral including stocks and subprime and structured securities such as collateralized debt obligations, according to the Fed Web site.

Borrowers include the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Citigroup and New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co., the country's biggest bank by assets.

Banks oppose any release of information because that might signal weakness and spur short-selling or a run by depositors, Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs for the Financial Services Roundtable, a Washington trade group, said in an interview last month.

'Complete Truth'

"Americans don't want to get blindsided anymore," Mendez said in an interview. "They don't want it sugarcoated or whitewashed. They want the complete truth. The truth is we can't take all the pain right now."

The Bloomberg lawsuit said the collateral lists "are central to understanding and assessing the government's response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression."

In response, the Fed argued that the trade-secret exemption could be expanded to include potential harm to any of the central bank's customers, said Bruce Johnson, a lawyer at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in Seattle. That expansion is not contained in the freedom-of-information law, Johnson said.

"I understand where they are coming from bureaucratically, but that means it's all the more necessary for taxpayers to know what exactly is going on because of all the money that is being hurled at the banking system," Johnson said.

The Bloomberg lawsuit is Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 08-CV-9595, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Pittman in New York at mpittman@bloomberg.net;

Last Updated: December 12, 2008 11:35 EST

This again from the McClatchy news group, which is not conservative by any means:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/65195.html

....is when somebody posts the hypocrisy in your posts you accuse them of something in an effort to change the subject.

Go ahead and have the administrator track my IP address.  I don't have anything to hide.

They're desperate.  The fact that she had the decency to even think of something is refreshing.  Truthfully, both parties need to try it more often.

If they want to continue this, fine.  We can just keep reminding them how nobody on their side does anything to return $ to the taxpayers.  All the libs want is to redistribute wealth and take more $ from you to give to someone else while further bloating the gov't.  This is why the Republicans were punished by America and also their own party.  They deserved it.  Now we're reclaiming our party.

Ask your accountants how it'll affect you.  I suppose some people will get lucky due to random numbers, but not the bulk of Americans.

Cut and run. It's your mantra.  For all your crying about the innocent civilians killed in Iraq, that is NOTHING compared to what will happen when we leave.  But you never mention that.  Just like Vietnam.  Well, at least your are consistent.

There's an addendum that is also 2 hours, done last year, all about the Federal Reserve and exactly what it is and its function.  V-e-r--r-y interesting . . . and scary.  I haven't seen the whole thing yet, but I will definitely sit and watch the whole thing later.

Maybe we can pick this thread up again after you've watched!

I paid well above minimum wage...I guess reading my post it looks like I paid minimum.  That was my mistake.

Note that the Army exceeded the June goal of 5,650 by 507 recruits……….but if it hadn’t have lowered the original goal which was 6,700, it would have missed its goal again by 545. Are these guys smart or what?

You guys just never get real or get honest...do you?  ANd the pathetic part is that there so many folks who just follow along with the obvious deceptions and lies......

He questions "whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good," and then he turns around and marries a LAWYER!

This isn't surprising to me at all.  Bush's is doing nothing but taking us backwards in time, whether it regards science or civil rights.  The only area that is moving forward by leaps and bounds and progressing at an alarming rate is the price of gasoline.