"YOU CAN'T HAAAAANDLE THE TRUTH!"

Apparently not all the judges are bought and paid for. Time to find out some long overdue details about just who got the goodies and why. Court Rules Fed must disclose bank bailout records.
For the record, I believe the Fed's concern is not that the public sees astronomical sums of money being channeled to a priveleged and connected few that won the hallowed "Too Big to Fail" designation, like GMAC. I believe their concern is that it will become common knowledge that our entire banking system was and still is bankrupt. When you use 30 and 40 to 1 leverage, in a fractional reserve banking system that at best requires a mere 10% of the money being lent to be actual reserves, you're open to some rather serious losses, should the bets ever go against you. The general mark-to-market accounting principles were changed, under intense congressional pressure, to hide the severity of the losses. We now use "mark -to -make-believe" where banks value assets at what they "believe" they are worth, if sold in an "orderly" way. Think I'm making that up? Click HERE. The losses are still there. The FED has printed 1.2 trillion dollars to buy mortgage-backed securities for the last year and prop up housing prices. Why? Wouldn't lower prices spur demand and let us get through this faster? Sure it would. So you have go back to the whole leverage bomb that went off in 2008. Banks cannot have everyone ask for their money back at once because it doesn't exist..fractional reserves remember? The system works because people don't do that...usually. But if you're leveraged at 40x that amount, like Citigroup was, then it takes 40x LESS losses than before to have the same effect..which is insolvency in a hurry. And which exists now, despite all the shennanigans. The FED is dutifully taking all that toxic crap from the bank's balance sheet and moving it to...yours the taxpayer's. Freeing the banks to get back to the vital business of speculating in the stock market, raping consumers with 29% interest rates on credit card balances they can no longer pay off, paying obscene bonuses because with all the rule changes the balance sheet looks GREAT! and of course lobbying congress not to change anything. Which is why I expect the FED to fight this all the way to the supreme court. And probably win, as they're persuaded it might not be in the country's best interest to be seen as Bernie Madoff wanna-be's by the rest of the world. Even if we are.

Follow up...I wrote that a month ago. Now this. Banks threaten to go to supreme court to prevent bailout disclosure *Sigh* I need to get paid for being right...