Monday, August 31, 2009

Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money - 3

In a previous post the case of Bloomberg L.P vs Governors of the Federal Reserve System was discussed.

Details of how the Board works came out, and it was held that the Federal Reserve System is a governmental rather a private entity, and therefore it was subject to the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA"); and that being the case, specifically, the federal court ordered:
1. The Board shall produce forthwith the Remaining Term Reports within five business days of the date hereof;

2. The Board shall search forthwith records at the FRBNY that constitute "Records of the Board" within the meaning of 12 C.F.R. § 261.2(i)(1); and

3. The parties shall confer following their review of the results of the search and inform the Court by letter no later than September 14, 2008 how they propose to proceed.
(Order and Opinion, Preska J., Federal District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan), 8/24/09, page 47).

Immediately the Board asked for a stay, to which the court replied that if would be stayed until the Board applied for and was granted an emergency stay by the Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. We are awaiting the appellate court decision.

Thus, this issue seems to be headed for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, where the new Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor who was recently seated, was a judge.

Then the case is likely to go on up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Sotomayor is now a Justice.

Hopefully the very conservative federal courts, which interestingly have not been as conservative as they are now since the Great Depression era, will require that citizens be informed of what is being done with their tax dollars.

If a veil of secrecy covers the public treasury we can be sure that the plunder this blog has been complaining about will continue until our financial oblivion is complete.

We can also wonder why the administration does not chasten the Board for violating the President's Directive to be more open in FOIA requests.

The next post in this seris is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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