by Calculated Risk on 8/28/2009 11:55:00 PM

From Rolfe Winkler at Reuters: Judge puts Fed's bailout revelations on hold

Chief Judge Loretta Preska of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan stayed her August 24 order in favor of Bloomberg News, which had sought [the names of the banks that have participated in the Federal Reserve's emergency lending programs] under the federal Freedom of Information Act, so that the central bank could appeal.

This case might go on and on. Perhaps Barney Frank and Ron Paul will pass new legislation requiring auditing the Fed before this FOIA case makes it through the courts.

UPDATE: Mish says Ron Paul RonPaul.com makes clear in an email to Mish that Frank is not talking HR1207, but an overall regulation.

"[W]e will subject [the Federal Reserve] to a complete audit. I have been working with Ron Paul, who is the main sponsor of that bill. He agrees that we don't want to have the audit appear as if it is influencing monetary policy, because that would be inflationary. And Ron and I agree on that.

One of the things the audit will show you is what the Federal Reserve buys and sells. And that will be made public, but not instantly, because if that was made instantly you would have a lot people trading off of that and you would have too much impact the market - and again Ron agrees with that. So we will publicly have that data released after a time period of several months, enough time so it wouldn't be market sensitive. That will be part of the overall Federal regulation that we are redacting.

The House will pass [the bill] probably in October."