" 'Systemic Risk' Stonewall " - Barofsky & Unanswered Questions

[WhiskeyGirl]

'Systemic Risk' Stonewall
Some bailout questions the Fed still hasn't answered.

On the key facts behind the bailouts of 2008, regulators have stonewalled the public, the press and even the inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. On Wednesday, we'll find out if they can also stonewall the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

A year ago we told you about former FDIC official Vern McKinley, who has made a series of Freedom of Information Act requests. He wanted to know what Fed governors meant when they said a Bear Stearns failure would cause a "contagion." This term was used in the minutes of the Fed meeting at which the central bank discussed plans by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to finance Bear's sale to J.P. Morgan Chase. The minutes contained no detail on how exactly the fall of Bear would destroy America.

He also requested minutes of the FDIC board meeting at which regulators approved financing for a Citigroup takeover of Wachovia. To provide this assistance, the board had to invoke the "systemic risk" exception in the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, and it therefore had to assert that such assistance was necessary for the health of the financial system. Yet days later, Wachovia cut a better deal to sell itself to Wells Fargo, instead of Citi. So how necessary was the assistance?

Then there's AIG. Who decided that firm was too big to fail, and on what basis? Last winter, Senator Jim Bunning went on CNBC and said that Mr. Bernanke's staff did not think AIG was too big to fail. "His staff didn't agree with him. . . . I'm talking about an email that he sent his staff after his staff recommended that the Federal Reserve not touch AIG," said Mr. Bunning.

What could the New York Fed be hiding? For one thing, a clear explanation of why it felt it had to bail out AIG. The story from regulators during the crisis was that credit-default swap counterparties had to be paid lest the financial system collapse. The public became incensed about 100-cents on the dollar pay-outs to big banks. Then last winter, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who ran the New York Fed in 2008, said the real problem had been AIG's insurance business, threatening average consumers.

Two years after the bailouts and more than a month after President Obama signed into law new authority for the government to prevent "systemic risk," Washington still won't tell us what this term means. Releasing the history of 2008 would at least allow us to know what regulators thought it meant at the time, with lessons for the future. Is there any other reason for this inquiry commission to exist?

And, we now have a healthcare law that lets the SEC ignore FOI requests...

more here - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467004575463781244452958.html

What are they hiding?