Fed Will Not Disclose Which Banks Are Receiving Repo Cash For At Least Two Years

Submitted by Chris Powell of GATA

If you want to know which investment houses have been getting the infamous “repo” loans from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in recent weeks, as GATA has wanted to know, you’ll have to wait two years, according to a letter received from the bank today in response GATA’s request for the information.

The delay, the New York Fed’s letter says, is authorized by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Perhaps more interestingly, the New York Fed’s letter, signed by Corporate Secretary Shawn Elizabeth Phillips, contends that the bank is exempt from the federal Freedom of Information Act but tries to comply with its spirit.

Such a claim of exemption was not made by the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors during GATA’s FOIA lawsuit against it in 2011, in which GATA sought access to the board’s gold-related documents. GATA technically won the case when U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle ruled that one such document was illegally withheld and ordered the board to disclose it to GATA and pay the organization court costs of $2,670:

What kind of system of government is it when every week an entity created by ordinary legislation can create enormous amounts of a nation’s currency and disburse it to unidentified parties without any oversight by the people’s elected representatives, news organizations, and ordinary citizens? It sure doesn’t sound like “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

The New York Fed’s response to GATA can be read below (pdf link):