Matt Stoller: The Federal Reserve’s Wheezy Independence Takes Another Hit

By Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He was a former financial services staffer to former Rep. Alan Grayson.  His Twitter feed is: http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller

You might have noted a few days ago that the Supreme Court ruled against Federal Reserve secrecy. The case had to do with a lawsuit by Bloomberg’s Mark Pittman demanding access to emergency loan documents relating to the Fed’s bailout of Bear Stearns. As the case traveled up the court system, major banks joined the Fed’s attempt to shield the information from public scrutiny. Eventually, the Fed dropped the suit, but the banks didn’t give up.



A few days ago, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, letting a lower court decision in favor of Pittman stand. The Fed will now be releasing Bear Stearns-related emergency lending documents in a few days.


It’s a historic case. You wouldn’t know that, however, by the response from Wall Street:

“I didn’t even know it was happening,” a senior bank executive said by phone this week when asked about concern over the pending release. There are no crisis meetings to discuss how to manage public reaction to release of the information, he said.

This is a far cry from the intense opposition to Fed transparency just last year from both Treasury and Wall Street The big banks, in the form of one of their trade groups known as the Clearinghouse Association, were crying wolf as late as 2010.