Let the public see who we're helping

Almost immediately after taking office in January, President Barack Obama promised to make the process of bailing out the nation's bankers to the tune of many hundreds of billions of dollars completely transparent so Americans could track "every dollar" they've been asked to invest.

Within a week, we'll see how sincere the president was about that statement, and we're counting on him to be true to his word.

At issue is a federal judge's order that the Federal Reserve Board identify financial institutions that benefited from 11 federal lending programs. The case stems from a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by the Bloomberg News service, which argued the public has a right to know who is benefiting and to what extent from the billions being handed out to stave off financial crisis. The Fed, however, contends that releasing the names would cause serious harm, potentially undermining the public's faith in individual banks or discouraging troubled banks from seeking help.

The courts, appropriately in our view, sided with Bloomberg and the public, ordering the Fed to release the information. The Fed has until Sept. 30 to appeal, and the decision on whether to do that rests squarely in the hands of Obama himself.

Certainly, no one here wishes to restrict the ability of regulators to manage the American economy. But in the face of a potential lending spree of as much as $2 trillion, we find it all but incomprehensible that the American public could be prevented from knowing who is receiving that money, what they put up for collateral, how much they are getting or what they are promising in return.

Bloomberg says in its suit that this information is "central to understanding and assessing the government's response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression."

Chief District Judge Loretta Preska agreed that the law and the public's interest outweighs the Fed's speculation that customers and investors might flee the banks if they knew the institutions were seeking government help.

"Conjecture, without evidence of imminent harm, simply fails to meet the (Federal Reserve) board's burden," she wrote.

So, now the ball is in the president's court. He has repeatedly stated his faith in the public's ability to govern itself as long as it has all the information it needs to make a reasoned judgment. Clearly, the public deserves and needs to know whether the funds it is providing as, in Bloomberg's term, an "involuntary investor" in banks are being used appropriately.

The president and the Fed should end the resistance, demonstrate the faith in the public that the administration has so often expressed and comply with Bloomberg's Freedom of Information request.