District Judge Loretta Preska has ordered the Federal Reserve to turn over loan and collateral data for their emergency loans under the Freedom of Information Act.

This is very important news for a number of reasons:

• It means that the public will get to review what was actually in this part of the Fed’s “sh$%pile for cash” program.
• It will spawn other FOIA suits.

And most importantly:

• Is an unequivocal ruling by the courts that the Federal Reserve is a federal agency and has to abide by federal rules how they do business.

I’m fairly certain that the Fed will take this all the way to the Supreme Court if it can, because those folks really believe that seeing the man behind the curtain would destroy the United States of America.

They are wrong, of course, but it is clear that this is what they believe.