Article Image

IPFS News Link • Federal Reserve

Bernanke's Secret FCIC Interview Is Now A Matter Of National Security?

• ZeroHedge.com
 
We do learn, however, that the Fed continues to believe it is above the people, and that the information it is privy to will never be voluntarily released to those whom it supposedly serves courtesy its three mandates, all of which have the words "Russell" and "36,000" in them. From Bloomberg: The FCIC is withholding records when there is “legal or proprietary information in those interviews that meant they could not be made public,” or no audio, transcript or summary exists, Tucker Warren, the FCIC’s spokesman, said after the panel yesterday released more than 300 witness interviews. He declined to elaborate on Bernanke. The interview is among records being transferred to the National Archives that will be made public in five years, Warren said. “There’s absolutely no reason to hold it,” unless it contains proprietary details about banks or international trading, said University of Texas Professor Robert Auerbach in Austin, a former congressional economist and author of the 2008 book “Deception and Abuse at the Fed.” “Bernanke will be long gone when it comes out, and that’s not a way to establish responsibility,” Auerbach said. In the unreleased interview, Bernanke also criticized credit-rating companies, discussed how he underestimated effects from the subprime-mortgage crisis and said the central bank’s lack of aggressiveness in mortgage regulation “was the most severe failure of the Fed in this particular episode,” according to the report. Bernanke told the FCIC that after Lehman failed, the Fed was concerned Goldman Sachs Group Inc. would “go under.” The FCIC’s meeting with Bernanke lasted 90 minutes and was held at the commission’s eighth-floor office near the White House, according to Bernanke’s daybook from the Fed.

AzureStandard