Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

by Adam Tooze

Only in June 2009 did the Fed begin publishing regular reports on the uptake of swap lines. The fuller records of the Fed’s emergency programs, on which this chapter is based, were not opened to the public until December 2010 and March 2011. They were produced as a result of the Dodd-Frank legislation of 2010 and a Freedom of Information suit brought by the Bloomberg news organization and contested by the Fed and the New York Clearing House Association, a banking lobby group, all the way to the Supreme Court.32 In defense of its secrecy, the Fed argued that revealing the information demanded by Bloomberg would jeopardize its efforts to calm financial markets, because full disclosure would reveal which banks were most in need of its liquidity assistance. The courts ruled in favor of Bloomberg and the Fed grudgingly complied.