High court: Fed must release details of emergency loans

The decision gives the Fed five days to release the records, which were sought in two separate lawsuits — one by Bloomberg News’s parent company, Bloomberg LP, and another by News Corp.’s Fox News Network.

For the first time ever, the Fed is being required by a court to reveal which banks received loans from its oldest lending program, the nearly century-old Discount Window. 

The documents are expected to provide greater insight into the central bank’s efforts to keep the nation’s economy from failing during the 2008 financial crisis. The Fed has added more than $2 trillion to its balance sheet to help stabilize the economy. As of March 16, the Fed’s asset holdings climbed to $2.587 trillion, from $2.581 trillion a week earlier, according to its weekly report, released Thursday. It was the sixth consecutive week assets eclipsed $2.5 trillion.

In its appeal, the Clearing House Association argued that “disclosure of this information threatens to harm the borrowing banks by allowing the public to observe their borrowing patterns during the recent financial crisis and draw inferences — whether justified or not — about their current financial conditions.” 

The Fed also had fought release of the documents, but under the Dodd-Frank law has been required to begin providing specifics about its bailout programs.

“Congress has resolved the question of whether and when the type of information at issue in this case must be disclosed,” according to a brief filed by acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, the Obama administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer.

Under the court order, the Fed must release 231 pages of documents related to borrowers and loan amounts in April and May 2008. Fox News is seeking 6,186 pages of similar information on loans made from August 2007 to November 2008, according to Bloomberg.