Internet tea kettles are a-whistling.

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

It’s a veritable calliope of tea kettles a-whistling through the tubes.  First, from zerohedge, the Fed has lost its Freedom of Information Act disclosure requirement to Bloomberg news, and now must apparently reveal some bank names and lending practices surrounding the bail-out:

Key selection from the Second Circuit’s Fed FOIA appeal:

The requirement of disclosure under FOIA and its proper limits are matters of congressional policy. The statute as written by Congress sets forth no basis for the exemption the Board asks us to read into it. If the Board believes such an exemption would better serve the national interest, it should ask Congress to amend the statute.

In other words: if the Fed wants to maintain its strict secrecy, it better get Congress to change the laws immediately. Of course, if that happens it will become very clear who controls not just the fiscal and monetary destiny of America, its executive control (via the recently institued bilateral decision making of who apoints who – the President of the United States <-> The President of the FRBNY, and vice versa ), but also the legislative. As for the judicial, we will know definitively when the Supreme Court overturns this decision. In other words, the Federal Reserve is about to become the President, the Congress and the Supreme Court (not to mention Wall Street) all rolled into one.

This could be a terrible blow to secrecy and the shadow banking/government system.

Then there’s this high C# whistling through the pipes on Bernanke’s “alleged” perjury before Congress, that has Karl Denninger in an uncharacteristically agitated state of arousal:

Remember, Bernanke said under questioning the other day that “they hid it” in response to a question about whether or not The Fed knew about the Lehman “105” repo arrangements, which appear to have been structured to intentionally mislead the public (and investors) about its liquidity position.

But in the deep of the night Financial Times published an article that resoundingly calls “BS” on that claim:

Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Reserve officials were warned by a leading Wall Street rival that Lehman Brothers was incorrectly calculating a key measure of its financial health months before its collapse in 2008, people familiar with the matter say.

Former Merrill Lynch officials said they contacted regulators about the way Lehman measured its liquidity position for competitive reasons. The Merrill officials said they were coming under pressure from their trading partners and investors, who feared that Merrill was less ¬liquid than Lehman.

Beyond the apparent perjury (which our Congress seems to ignore any time a “powerful” person commits it) there is the larger problem in that if the Chairman of  The Fed has lied about this, what else has he lied about?

Most critically, what about all those other banks out there with HELOC exposure behind underwater first mortgages that are not being paid on time?

Revelations of “regulatory capture” at the fraudulent SEC have long since driven Barry Ritholtz into high-frequency vocalizations:

The WSJ is reporting that back in 2003, the SEC tried to remove the restrictions on compromised security analysts that tried to prevent them from whoring out recommendations for banking business.

Similar to the prostitution of the ratings agencies, the SEC somehow thought it was okay for iBanks to fuck their stock buying investors, just so long as they got paid enough in banking fees to justify the screwing.

– Snip  –

“Like the last scene in Spartacus, I want to see a row of heads on pikes, and crucifixions stretching from Washington DC to Wall Street. I am beyond disgusted.”

Ilargi feels sympathetic vibrations from Barry’s ultrasonic masterpiece of expressionism, and transposes the score back into the range of human audition:

Now, I know what Ritholtz means, but I don’t think heads on spikes is the way to go. Yet. Investigations are, though, and not the small time in the shadows kind, but the thorough out in the open kind. As I said before, Tim Geithner should be put on temporary leave pending such investigations, and there are many more in Washington who should meet the same fate. Bernanke and Shapiro come to mind. Perhaps we should make them understand we’re doing them a favor that way: it’s either that or face Barry Ritholtz. I’d say that the lack of arrests, investigations and convictions thus far will be a rapidly growing threat to the Obama presidency as we go move into the summer and beyond.

Meanwhile, Chris Dodd is suddenly clearing his throat and practicing arpeggios on Lehman’s fraudulent activity:

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) is calling for a criminal investigation into the activities of Lehman Brothers and other banking firms that may have engaged in accounting manipulation.

In a letter sent to to Attorney General Eric Holder, Dodd asks that Holder appoint a task force to investigate any possible accounting irregularities by Lehman and other banks to conceal the holdings of bad assets.

Dodd wrote to Holder:

“According to the report of the U.S. Trustee-appointed Examiner Anton R. Valukas, Lehman presented a misleading picture of its financial condition to the public by using extensive repurchase agreements known as Repo 105 transactions. The Examiner found that ‘Lehman did not disclose its use – or the significant magnitude of its use – of Repo 105 to the Government, to the rating agencies, to its investors, or to its own Board of Directors.'”

“We must work tirelessly to reduce the incidence of financial fraud in order to restore trust and confidence in the financial markets,” Dodd wrote. “A task force investigation and taking appropriate Federal actions in these matters will contribute to these goals.”

Of course, anyone who doesn’t want to be left out of the choir is starting to sing, too:

Meanwhile, the lawyer for a Lehman Brothers whistleblower said Friday his client warned his bosses that accounting gimmicks the bank used before its collapse may have been illegal.

Erwin Shustak says his client, former Lehman senior vice president Matthew Lee, was fired days after questioning the accounting tricks in a letter to his superiors.

That’s a lot of tea kettles piping, and I’m just getting out of bed.