Banks that Took Emergency Loans to be Named by Federal Reserve

Here’s a fun game: later today, after the Federal Reserve is forced to reveal the list of banks that took “too big to fail” loans during the recent Financial Crisis, see if your personal bank is on there. I…don’t know what you do after that.

So maybe the game’s not so much “fun” as “depressing.”

As the Washington Post/Bloomberg News reports, thanks to Bloomberg (parent company of Bloomberg News) and its Freedom of Information Act suit against the Federal Reserve, the Fed will have to list the details of all the banks it lent money to starting around 2008 – back when we were all talking about bubbles and not in the context of birthday parties or exotic dancers.

The Fed tried its best to keep the list super secret, claiming that publicizing the names would only lead to directionless anger and ill-will. Which: yes. That’s almost certainly going to happen. But I can promise the banks this – it cannot be any worse than the time I had to borrow $78 from my mom.

Nothing is worse than borrowing $78 from my mom.

What happens after the list is revealed? Beats me. Beats anyone, actually. There will likely be a series of front page stories; someone with a chalkboard and a network show will probably draw something diagrammie that will allegedly reveal Some Truth; some banks will apologize; some won’t. We’ll literally know more than we knew before (in some cases) just because we’ll have a list of names to attach to our frustration. But we won’t really know any more than we do now.

Of course, businesses that also accepted government bail-out money should also be accountable to this list-making. It will be interesting to see if they’re the next to get this Who’s-Who? treatment.