Conflicts of interest with financial rescue?

With the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street as active as ever and with politicians receiving millions of campaign dollars from Wall Street, why should we be surprised? Anyone who argues against more openness in the system is kidding themselves that elected leaders and the Federal Reserve are not all about protecting the powerful interests over the rest of us. Whether it's the lawsuits demanding details of the bailouts or the WikiLeaks information, the public deserves to know the details.

It's people like Joe Lieberman, Mike Huckabee and even the more mild critics who are the problem. For these people, it's OK to move back and forth between government and the deepest pockets in industry yet it's somehow a problem for people to see what is happening behind closed doors. It's those people who detest freedom. How far off are we from "United States of America, sponsored by Citibank"? Bloomberg:

Later, the Fed set up the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF, to keep consumer credit flowing. It hired Pimco, manager of the world’s largest bond fund, and BlackRock, the world’s biggest money manager, to provide analytical help, according to a November 2010 report by the Fed’s Office of Inspector General.

“Any situation where the potential exists for a conflict of interest is concerning,” said Kurt Bardella, spokesman for Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican who will become chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee next month. “This really brings into focus one of the unintended consequences of institutionalizing the federal government picking winners and losers while those entities are partaking directly and indirectly in what should be exclusive government functions.”

And here is one of the better summaries of the financial rescue. Talk about entitlement, this dwarfs them all.

“It seems clear that the biggest beneficiaries were the insiders,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “We have a huge pinata here. The question is whether we had insiders deciding who would get the candy or was everyone in the same boat? Think of the people who get upset about the government giving a homeowner some help. Now multiply the sums by about 100 million. We should care.”