After a lawsuit was filed by Bloomberg, a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, the Federal Reserve has released over 29,000 pages of documents which gives us some detail of the bailouts that took place 2 and a half years ago. Although much of it will be called lending from the discount window, it is still a bailout nonetheless. If a bank, or any firm, has to get a loan from the Fed's discount window, it is being subsidized. No private party would make a loan under the same conditions.
The documents show that some of the biggest "borrowers" were not even American firms. The most ironic of them all shows that a company which is partly owned by the Libyan central bank (part of the Libyan government) borrowed billions of dollars. This pretty much fits in line with U.S. foreign policy: "we were for them before we were against them".
If you are not outraged by this, then you are either a long-time libertarian who has become numb to what is happening or else you are just not with it at all. The American people were overwhelmingly against the bailouts that took place in the fall of 2008. Despite the outrage, Congress, along with Bush, passed the bailouts, telling us that the whole system would have collapsed otherwise.
This was hard enough to fathom at the time, but now we know the Fed was also bailing out foreign banks and, apparently, foreign governments. Where does this end? I suppose the answer to that is with a collapsing dollar.
This whole episode is another black eye for the Fed and the federal government in general. The American people are starting to figure out that these clowns in DC are not on their side. They do everything for themselves.
Since Ron Paul's campaign in 2007, the Fed is being questioned more and more. The internet has played a huge role in spreading all of the information and disinformation. Although the numbers are still small, more people are becoming educated about monetary policy and the central bank. More people understand that the Fed simply creates money out of thin air, which then makes the dollars we have worth less.
While this release of documents should outrage the average American, I think it is a good thing overall because it alerts people as to who the enemy is. When high price inflation becomes more apparent, I want people to know who the culprit is. I want people to blame the Fed, just as they should. The Fed has gotten away with things for almost 100 years and finally, the tide is starting to turn.