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Fed Chair Bernanke Held 84 Secret Meetings In The Lead Up To The Wall Street Collapse
Wallstreetonparade.com
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 10, 2014
The Federal Reserve Building in Washington, D.C.
It’s been over five years since the collapse of iconic Wall Street firms such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers; the insolvency and bailout of AIG and Citigroup; the receivership of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; the shotgun marriage of Bank of America and Merrill Lynch. After a 5-year delay, the Federal Reserve has released the full transcripts of its meetings in 2007 and 2008 – the two key years of the crisis. But for unexplained reasons, the Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke continues to redact 84 meetings from his appointment calendar that occurred between January 1, 2007 and the pivotal collapse of Bear Stearns on the weekend of March 15-16, 2008.
At first blush, one might think that Bernanke is attempting to protect the image of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors as independent of any political influence or business lobbying. But the mystery of these redactions is deepened by the fact that Bernanke has no problem listing meetings with President Obama, specific members of Congress, representatives of the Bank of England, every major CEO of a Wall Street firm, titans of industry like the heads of Ford Motor, IBM, and British Petroleum, quasi lobbyists like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Even the Reverend Jesse Jackson of RainbowPUSH Coalition is listed as meeting with Bernanke.
So just who is left whose identify needs to be secreted away for more than five years? One meeting on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 is so secret that both the meeting participant(s) and the location are redacted.
A careful study of where the most heavy concentration of redactions occur suggests two things: (1) Bernanke does not want the public to know that the Fed knew that Citigroup was in severe crisis months before the public became aware and (2) the Fed Chair’s participation in efforts to save Bear Stearns from a bankruptcy filing was more involved than presently known.
As we detailed last week, long before Congress approved and President Bush signed into law the Troubled Asset Relief Program on October 3, 2008, Citigroup had gotten customized relief from the Federal Reserve. For example, on August 20, 2007, the Fed granted Citigroup an exemption that would allow it to funnel up to $25 billion from its FDIC insured depository bank to mortgage-backed securities speculators at its broker-dealer unit. The Fed notes in this letter that the bank “is well capitalized,” a statement that has been called into serious question in hindsight. (Federal Reserve Exemption to Citigroup to Loan to Its Broker-Dealer, August 20, 2007)
