The ability to act subservient to the banking sector while posing as a regulator has been a major factor in the trajectory of the current crisis. For instance, the Fed dictated to AIG that it must keep all details of the bailout secret, even from the SEC (Walsh, “Fed Advice to AIG Scrutinized”). This was done to hide what was arguably one of the most corrupt aspects of Fed behavior in the early phases of the crisis, namely, pretending the system of credit default swaps had any integrity whatsoever. Moreover, the Fed has persistently used underhanded tactics, like having the private banking lobby block most scrutiny of Fed actions, to consolidate its lack of political accountability (Auerbach, 2008, pp. 5, 157–59). It fought the Freedom of Information Act request of Bloomberg to disclose its actions during the crisis retrospectively all the way to the Supreme Court through surrogates from the banking industry.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 2082