It becomes glaringly apparent in these troubling times that our government, our media, our public schools, our financial system, our business & industry, even many churches, mosques & synagogues prevaricate & propagate untruths, half-truths, deceit and deception. For a variety of excuses, rationalizations & justifications, lies have become the foundation of American society. And, as if lies weren't enough, the denial & denying of truth is just as rampant. Read on...
"For the mystery of iniquity does already work: ...Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all delusion of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." II Th 2:7-12
"Sanctify them through your truth: your word is truth." Jn 17:17
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Federal Reserve Refuses to Disclose Loan Recipients of $2 Trillion
By Mark Pittman, Bloomberg News
Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The Fed responded Dec. 8, saying it’s allowed to withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information. The institution confirmed that a records search found 231 pages of documents pertaining to some of the requests.
“If they told us what they held, we would know the potential losses that the government may take and that’s what they don’t want us to know,” said Carlos Mendez, a senior managing director at New York-based ICP Capital LLC, which oversees $22 billion in assets.
The Fed stepped into a rescue role that was the original purpose of the Treasury’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. The central bank loans don’t have the oversight safeguards that Congress imposed upon the TARP.
Total Fed lending exceeded $2 trillion for the first time Nov. 6. It rose by 138 percent, or $1.23 trillion, in the 12 weeks since Sept. 14, when central bank governors relaxed collateral standards to accept securities that weren’t rated AAA.
‘Been Bamboozled’
Congress is demanding more transparency from the Fed and Treasury on bailout, most recently during Dec. 10 hearings by the House Financial Services committee when Representative David Scott, a Georgia Democrat, said Americans had “been bamboozled.”
Bloomberg News, a unit of New York-based Bloomberg LP, on May 21 asked the Fed to provide data on collateral posted from April 4 to May 20. The central bank said on June 19 that it needed until July 3 to search documents and determine whether it would make them public. Bloomberg didn’t receive a formal response that would let it file an appeal within the legal time limit.
On Oct. 25, Bloomberg filed another request, expanding the range of when the collateral was posted. It filed suit Nov. 7.
In response to Bloomberg’s request, the Fed said the U.S. is facing “an unprecedented crisis” in which “loss in confidence in and between financial institutions can occur with lightning speed and devastating effects.”
Data Provider
The Fed supplied copies of three e-mails in response to a request that it disclose the identities of those supplying data on collateral as well as their contracts.
While the senders and recipients of the messages were revealed, the contents were erased except for two phrases identifying a vendor as “IDC.” One of the e-mails’ subject lines refers to “Interactive Data -- Auction Rate Security Advisory May 1, 2008.”
Brian Willinsky, a spokesman for Bedford, Massachusetts- based Interactive Data Corp., a seller of fixed-income securities information, declined to comment.
“Notwithstanding calls for enhanced transparency, the Board must protect against the substantial, multiple harms that might result from disclosure,” Jennifer J. Johnson, the secretary for the Fed’s Board of Governors, said in a letter e-mailed to Bloomberg News.
‘Dangerous Step’
“In its considered judgment and in view of current circumstances, it would be a dangerous step to release this otherwise confidential information,” she wrote.
New York-based Citigroup Inc., which is shrinking its global workforce of 352,000 through asset sales and job cuts, is among the nine biggest banks receiving $125 billion in capital from the TARP since it was signed into law Oct. 3. More than 170 regional lenders are seeking an additional $74 billion.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would meet congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system.
The Freedom of Information Act obliges federal agencies to make government documents available to the press and public. The Bloomberg lawsuit, filed in New York, doesn’t seek money damages.
‘Right to Know’
“There has to be something they can tell the public because we have a right to know what they are doing,” said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington, Virginia-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
“It would really be a shame if we have to find this out 10 years from now after some really nasty class-action suit and our financial system has completely collapsed,” she said.
The Fed’s five-page response to Bloomberg may be “unprecedented” because the board usually doesn’t go into such detail about its position, said Lee Levine, a partner at Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz LLP in Washington.
“This is uncharted territory,” said Levine during an interview from his New York office. “The Freedom of Information Act wasn’t built to anticipate this situation and that’s evident from the way the Fed tried to shoehorn their argument into the trade-secrets exemption.”
The Fed lent cash and government bonds to banks that handed over collateral including stocks and subprime and structured securities such as collateralized debt obligations, according to the Fed Web site.
Borrowers include the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Citigroup and New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co., the country’s biggest bank by assets.
Banks oppose any release of information because that might signal weakness and spur short-selling or a run by depositors, Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs for the Financial Services Roundtable, a Washington trade group, said in an interview last month.
‘Complete Truth’
“Americans don’t want to get blindsided anymore,” Mendez said in an interview. “They don’t want it sugarcoated or whitewashed. They want the complete truth. The truth is we can’t take all the pain right now.”
The Bloomberg lawsuit said the collateral lists “are central to understanding and assessing the government’s response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression.”
In response, the Fed argued that the trade-secret exemption could be expanded to include potential harm to any of the central bank’s customers, said Bruce Johnson, a lawyer at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in Seattle. That expansion is not contained in the freedom-of-information law, Johnson said.
“I understand where they are coming from bureaucratically, but that means it’s all the more necessary for taxpayers to know what exactly is going on because of all the money that is being hurled at the banking system,” Johnson said.
The Bloomberg lawsuit is Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 08-CV-9595, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
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Fifth Georgia bank closed, 24th nationwide failure in 2008
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of the Duluth, Ga.-based bank, which had total assets of $572 million and deposits of $515 million as of Dec. 8.
The FDIC said Winston-Salem, N.C.-based BB&T has agreed to assume all of the bank's deposits, including those that exceeded the insurance limit, for $112,000. BB&T will also buy about $55 million of the failed bank's assets; the FDIC will retain the rest for later disposition.
The four branches of Haven Trust Bank will reopen on Monday as BB&T branches, and deposits will continue to be insured by the FDIC. Regular deposit accounts are now insured up to $250,000 as part of the financial rescue law enacted in early October.
The agency said depositors will continue to have full access to their money.
The FDIC estimated that the resolution of Haven Trust Bank will cost the federal deposit insurance fund $200 million.
The 24 U.S. bank failures so far this year compare with three for all of 2007 and are far more than in the previous five years combined. It's expected that many more banks won't survive the next year of economic turmoil. The pressures of tumbling home prices, rising foreclosures and tighter credit have been battering financial firms nationwide.
Of the roughly 8,500 federally insured banks and thrifts, the FDIC had 171 on its confidential list of troubled institutions as of Sept. 30 — a nearly 50% jump from the second quarter and the highest tally since late 1995.
Update:
Sanderson State Bank of Sanderson, Texas fails: 25th of year
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said late Friday that the Sanderson State Bank of Sanderson, Texas, was closed by the Texas Department of Banking, making it the 25th U.S. bank failure of the year. The Pecos County State Bank of Fort Stockton, Texas, will assume all of Sanderson's deposits. As of Dec. 3, Sanderson had total assets of $37 million and total deposits of $27.9 million. Pecos County State Bank will assume all of the deposits for a 0.55% premium, and buy $3.8 million of assets, with the option to buy owned premises and equipment. It was the second bank failure announced by the FDIC on Friday.____________________________
Court considers ACLU demand for Bible ban
School policy targeted for treating Scriptures equally
12:25 am Eastern, WorldNetDaily
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A federal appeals court is considering a Missouri dispute in which the American Civil Liberties Union challenged a school district policy that treated the Bible the same as other books and demanded the authority to veto what would be handed out to students.
The controversy arose over a request by the Gideons to distribute Bibles in the South Iron School District, which has a neutral policy that allows distribution of outside literature by various groups under set rules, irrespective of whether the literature is secular or religious.
"Under this policy, an outside group may offer Bibles to students who wish to take them in the same manner as other nonreligious groups are permitted to distribute secular literature," according to Liberty Counsel, whose chief, Mathew Staver, argued the case today before a panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis.
The Bible distribution was targeted by an ACLU lawsuit in 2006, and the school responded with a written policy that treats all literature the same.
But at the trial court level, Judge Catherine Perry issued an order specifically prohibiting distribution of the Bible, and the Bible alone, after calling it an "instrument of religion."
She said the district's neutral treatment of literature is unacceptable, because it actually would allow the distribution of the Bible.
"The ruling presented a novel (and unconstitutional) theory that a private third party (like the ACLU) must have the opportunity to veto the distribution request of the private applicant," Liberty Counsel said. "The veto power, the judge wrote, must be provided to veto religious, but not secular, literature."
Staver said the Constitution simply doesn't allow the Bible to be singled out, like contraband, for special penalties.
"How ironic that in America, until recent times, the Bible formed the basis of education, and now its mere presence is radioactive in the opinion of some judges," he said. "The Founders never envisioned such open hostility toward the Christian religion as we see today in some venues. To single out the Bible alone for discriminatory treatment harkens back to the Dark Ages. America deserves better. Our Constitution should be respected, not disregarded."
Staver told WND that a decision is not expected to be announced for about two months.
He said the lower court's ban targets only the Bible.
"The Quran is OK, and other kinds of religious texts; just not the Bible. The Bible alone is impermissible in the public school," he said.
WND reported earlier when a brief was filed with the federal appeals court.
Among the groups that have distributed material at the school are the Army Corps of Engineers, Red Cross, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Iron County Health Department, Missouri Water Patrol, Missouri Highland Healthcare and Union Pacific Railroad, officials said.
"The ACLU might not like the fact that equal access also means equal treatment for religious speech, but the Constitution requires equal treatment. The First Amendment protects private religious viewpoints. Hecklers may heckle but they may not veto private religious speech. ... Religious viewpoints have Constitutional protection," Staver said.
The minutes from board meetings noted the board president "explained to the board at this point, we are an open forum and any group can request to enter our school and distribute materials – atheists, communists, gay rights, etc." The minutes note the board members acknowledged the policy.
However, Perry banned the district "from distributing or allowing distribution of Bibles to elementary school children on school property at any time during the school day."
"The district court also opined that 'Bibles are different' from other forms of religious literature," Liberty Counsel said.
The Gideons, a group founded in the late 1800s, have as their "sole purpose" the goal "to win men, women, boys and girls to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ through association for service, personal testimony, and distributing the Bible in the human traffic lanes and streams of everyday life."
Gideons have placed the Bible in 181 nations in 82 different languages over the years.
The organization focuses on hotels and motels, hospitals and nursing homes, schools, colleges and universities, the military, law enforcement, prisons and jails.
"The demand for Scriptures in these areas far exceeds our supplies that we are able to purchase through our donations," the group said. Much more could be done – if funds were available. However, we are placing and distributing more than one million copies of the Word of God, at no cost, every seven days in these areas. ..."
The Gideons is the oldest Christian business and professional men's association in the U.S.
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