Supreme Court Lets Fed Bailout Records Release Stand

Supreme Court Lets Fed Bailout Records Release Stand

www.cnbc.com

The Supreme Court let stand a ruling that the U.S. Federal Reserve must disclose details about its emergency lending programs to banks during the financial crisis in 2008.

The justices rejected the banks' appeals. The Obama administration said the appeals should be denied.

The appeals court ordered the disclosure of borrowers' names, loan amounts and loan dates for transactions at the Fed's discount window and from its emergency lending facilities.

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This has the potential to be explosive and unmask a fraud and misuse of public trust and funds that span two administrations. It is a known fact that many of the banks who were given TARP funds did not want them or need them, but were forced to take them by the government. Those banks are on record, including JP Morgan/Chase.

What about the banks who did not need them but took them anyway? Were they being patriotic and simply did not want to go against the administration, or did they get sweet deals by being quiet about being forced to take the cash.

What were the terms of the loans specifically? Were the terms consistent across the banks and which banks got better deals? How does the alignment between both administration offical connections and campaign contributions impact the amounts and terms of the loans? For the banks that did not want the money but had to take it, what did they do with it? I am guessing that some speculated on the markets, worsening the situation with free money.

Hopefully we get some solid reporting on this. There is some reason that the administration wanted this information kept quiet. The next battle will be the level or redaction within the documents themselves

www.cnbc.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

What folk have to understand, is that if there is any element of truth to the worst of our assumptions for the reasoning behind the financial manoeuvres of the US government with regard to thier bailout scheme, then the evidence for that will either be destroyed, lost, or rumour of its existance simply denied.
If I were to embark on a massive , government sponsored fraud, the very last thing I would do is leave a trace of evidence in files which are under public scrutiny, or for that matter, able to be requested, demanded, or obtained in any fashion , by any court whatsoever, let alone the Supreme Court. What I am trying to say here, in summary, is that if there is a conspiracy within this bizzare bailout package, then it is likely that there will be little to no useful evidence in these released records.
Like anything which would cause civil war, were it to come to public attention, I would not be suprised if any possible evidence of a plot involving bailouts of banks, or the funds from which those bailouts occur, were to be lost until perhaps everyone who remembers the incident is long dead.

I guess I have officially become too cynical for my own good... this should be a welcome development; unfortunately all I can think of is "Which set of books will we be allowed to audit?"

They can always lie verbally and on paper... and who can prove that in a court of law? They hold all the cards.

Originally posted by Maxmars
I guess I have officially become too cynical for my own good... this should be a welcome development; unfortunately all I can think of is "Which set of books will we be allowed to audit?"

They can always lie verbally and on paper... and who can prove that in a court of law? They hold all the cards.

Darn you Maxmars!

I was all ready to do a "Happy Dance" when I read this and you had to break out some old-fashioned logic on us. Grrrrrrrrr!

Okay, seriously, this whole thing stank to high heaven coming out of the gate. Whether the truth will ever see the light of day, I honestly doubt it. Bottom line is I will always believe something very sinister is behind all of this. Details? Sorry, too many theories and I'm just a plain, old Retail Manager.

Sigh!

reply to post by TrueBrit


Well, if that is the case, then something is absolutely wrong and by virtue of them not being able to produce the documents is proof of a cover up. Having worked in the financial services industry on the IT side of the shop, I can tell you that 100% of all e-mails, not merely those germane to business, but all of them are simultaneously journaled at the time of receipt to a separete e-mail store. They are typically stored off site and that location managed by a third party provider. They are there and there are legal requirements to maintain them for 7 years.

The same goes with other forms of documents. It is easier to lose the documents and cover that up, but not if there are daily incremental back-ups since I strongly doubt that folks were smart enough to produce a document, print it out and then delete it before the nightly backup. The top bankers don't type their own stuff either, they dictate or hand write and an assistant types them up.

I guess my point is that the records are there. To eliminate them would be to compromise data center operators, outside IT service firms and administrative folks - way too big of a pool which why I suppose the govenment was looking to shut this business down. If there are folks serious about getting the details, they can get the details and should we discover that the pertinent records are not available or can not be found, then you not only have a cover-up on the part of the bank, you have a cover-up on the part of the bank that is with 100% certainty being enabled by the government.

I'm hopefull. Any lawyer worth their salt knows how to write the discovery documents for these files. Hell, I have responded to a ton of them and could write them myself. I think we'll get the details and think we'll find that the entire business was totally dirty and that a ton of folks made a ton of money out of the TARP program.

I'm most interested in what the large banks did with the money and to the extent that they made money off of it, did they keep it? Of course they did and that is our money. I am also interested in finding out what regional banks received TARP funds and have subsequently failed. If a regional bank got TARP cash and subsequently failed, why did they get the money in the first place? Clearly the issue is not that they did not get enough, because 30% of the TARP funds have not even been distributed.

This could easily lead to the largest financial fraud since ENRON.

reply to post by dolphinfan


If you'll pardon the interjection. I agree with the idea and sense of your post; however, our 'political' leaders don't seem to agree.... after all, when thousands of White House e-mails went missing (or were "lost" as they like to say) their IT director died in a plane crash before he could be deposed.... so... without casting aspersions on anyone in particular, such things can be 'eliminated' from the record - because 'accidents' happen.

Mentioning ENRON immediately made me think of another massive loss of evidence.... WTC 7 on September 11th, 2001 where the ENTIRE ENRON investigative record was said to be housed... and let's not forget the accounting investigation searching for the disposition of some 2 trillion dollars given to the DOD which ended abruptly as well (the same day) when a plane hit the Pentagon..... a scenario which "no one had ever imagined" according to a number of cabinet-level officers of the administration.

All meaning to say that in the end, we are at the mercy of the gatekeepers here... and our political clowns gave the keys to the banking cartel.... Can anyone recall the last inventory of American gold bullion held in our country?

reply to post by Maxmars


I hear you and don't disagree, but in terms of a cover-up, this is much more difficult. You have a large number of banks, all with independant operating environments and most of which outsource components of those to different third parties. Many of these data stores are outside of the US in places like India, making it even more difficult. You literally would have to destroy records in dozens of data centers and compromise hundreds of people.

Additionally, to the extent that a bank was unable to produce the records, they would be in direct violation of numerous state and federal laws and subject to criminal prosecution or at a minimum federal and or state sanction.

The government will do what it can do to hide things, think about Sandy Berger jamming secret papers into his underwear and spiriting them out of the White House - we never learned what those papers were - and good old Sandy still maintains a top secret clearance and works for the government - at least the last gig he had that I knew about was as a senior advisor on intelligence and foreign policy to Hilliary Clinton during her run for President.

They might try to do cover it up, all I'm suggesting is that it will be immeasurably more difficult and there are way many more folks (bank depositors for example) who have a dog in this fight and will apply pressure for release of the documents.

Interesting that the day this comes out JP Morgan increased their dividend 5x.

They should make it public..its OUR MONEY that was used for bailouts..yours mine everyones. we ahve every legal right too know what was donw with our money.and since we all know the fed is engaged in shady business practices, we ahve every more the right..pull the wool over thier heads for once.

reply to post by TrueBrit


agree! why would the goverment keep records of there own demise?

We hold records because we have to report to the goverment every year and pay or face jail time. the goverment or FED dont have to report to anyone so if i was them why keep the docs?

I agree fully with the cynicism expressed by Maxmars!
The Sarbanes Oxley rules governing data, and access to that data and auditing are adhered to rigorously in the private sector and to do otherwise is a criminal offence. However, it seems to be, like many rules, regulations and laws these days, applied in degrees dependent on who you are.

To the ordinary man in the street, it has been apparent for a very long time that entities such as government departments, central banks and the big private banking concerns are allowed to ride roughshod over laws that will put the little guy away for the slightest infraction, yet allow the big players immunity. It doesn't help that those organisations tasked with overseeing and regulating, are staffed by people from the very organisations that are supposed to be regulated. A blatant example of conflict of interest that is so in your face, but which nobody is ever held accountable for.

If anything comes from the disclosure of the cooked documents to be released, it'll be a token slap on the wrist, a fine consisting of a fraction of the fraudulent profits made, and a promise to learn from the mistakes of the past. How many times do we have to see the same old charade played out?

reply to post by Britguy


Actually the one likely to pop a vein in my head is the one where they are allowed to 'admit no guilt' and pay a fine..... leaving their corporate record pristine and free from any distracting proof of their shenanigans... failing that they can always spawn a corporation from themselves and use it to bear the burden of guilt..... leaving the parent corporation angelically pure......you can always tell who the real power masters are by these instances which rarely get covered by the media they own.

reply to post by Britguy


Its a whole lot more complicated than the records that are governed by Sarbanes/Oxley, which are maintained by a specific corporation. The same thing goes about e-mails, third party data centers and service providers, but in the realm of financial data, there is an entirely different change of custody of that data as well.

The banks presumably needed the cash to make good on their money market funds and maintain the counterparty chain, the failure of the counterparty chain is what brought Lehman down. Firms don't simply add cash to their money market fund to meet obligations, they have to place them into the actual fund. To do that requires the use of a transfer agent. The value of the fund (whether or not an individual share is worth $1 is done by a custodian bank, not the bank who manages the fund). When redemptions come in on the fund, the custodian bank is responsible for managing the value of the fund and submits requests for cash to the bank so that the $1/share can be maintained.

To the extent that the bank receiving the TARP used those funds to speculate in the market rather than shore up their balance sheet, those records would also be on record with the custodian bank, again who manages the portfolios.

Obviously the transfer agent and custodian have rigorous records retention policys.

All (pretty much all) financial data transfers are executed via the SWIFT network which is an internationally managed, secure data transfer network. SWIFT is headquartered in Belguim. Any and all of these transfers of funds would have SWIFT records.

All of the custodian banks are global banks. State Street, Brown Brothers Harriman, Mellon. To the extent that they engaged in a cover-up of this nature would destroy their firms. Again, there is no way to destroy the evidence here - there are simply too many links in the chain and only one needs to stand tall and it would be quite easy to back up or move forward on the chain to get to the truth.

I've spent 25 years in this business and can tell you that unless these banks took the cash, held it in their cash account and went outside of the system, a simple records request from either/all the bank in question, the transfer agent, custodian bank or SWIFT would lead to the details being uncovered. There is no way that these banks could use the current chain of custody in place and not leave records all over the place and these dudes were not walking around with trash bags of cash. The money was wired into their cash accounts and what was done once it got there will be easy to determine. What also will be easy to determine is the status of their money market funds and overall balance sheets at the time they received the cash, telling us if they needed the cash at all.

I suspect what happened here is that there were are few banks/insurance companies that were in trouble. They took that as an excuse to create a massive bailout so that they could give cash to banks with ties to the government who did not need it, so that they could take advantage of what amounted to essentially free money. Another key motivator was that by giving them the money the banks would come under increased scrutiny by the government, something the statists in the government want and have always wanted. Remember that this was all done over the span of a few days -- it was not well thought out. Also remember that Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan/Chase went on the record at the time and indicated that he wanted no part of it. Did not want the money, did not need the money. The government told him he had to take it and that they would have to keep it for a specified time. The day that time expired, JP Morgan sent the full amount back to the government.

Right now there are attorneys at Treasury looking to come at this again from another legal angle.

See thiers part the problem, corporate whore lawyers* already their tryng to block any public knowledge of illegal activity going on...
wasnt their a small point in time, early 70's? whre their was technically, an open season on lawyers?