instead of reading some other person's opinion of the report about "secret" this and "secret" that, go read the entire GAO report!!
http://www.scribd.com/doc/60553686/G...-Investigation
"The Reserve Banks’ and LLCs’ financial statements, which include the emergency programs’ accounts and activities, and their related financial reporting internal controls, are
audited annually by an independent auditing firm. These independent financial statement audits, as well as other audits and reviews conducted by the Federal Reserve Board, its Inspector General, and the Reserve Banks’ internal audit function,
did not report any significant accounting or financial reporting internal control issues concerning the emergency programs." [emphasis mine -pmd]
the main recommendations were to improve their processes & procedures for
* the use of competition
* manage conflicts of interest for its employees, directors,and program vendors
* mitigate risk of losses on its emergency loans in future crisis lending programs
* consistent treatment of eligible program participants
also, look at the table "List of Federal Reserve Emergency Programs and Assistance Covered by this GAO Review"
of the roughly $3 trilliion either loaned or provided for assistance, roughly $947 billion was outstanding as of 6/29/2011 [most of that was in the Agency Mortgage-Backed Securities Purchase Program]. many of the programs are completed and closed out.
before you go off on how secretive and bad the Fed is, list in detail how you would have handled the financial crisis of fall 2008!!!!!
btw, go here for an overview of what the Federal Reserve System does.
http://www.kc.frb.org/aboutus/federalreservesystem/
here for the main FRS website
http://federalreserve.gov/
and here for purposes and functions of the FRS
http://federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_12594.htm
http://www.federalreserve.gov/pf/pf.htm
and discussions/descriptions of their balance sheet
http://federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst.htm
or dont read any of these pages and just believe whatever you hear or read about what the Fed does.
disclosure - i worked as a contractor on a business process re-design project for a FRB department back in 2005.