In a revelation that should surprise no one, lending records of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released by a March court order show that the Fed made cut-rate emergency loans of at least $30 billion each to major banks in 2008 without informing Congress, shareholders or the American public.

Why did financial officials keep the loans — which were as low as .01 percent at a time when the Fed regularly charged 0.5 percent — a secret? Because the purchasing public might “inaccurately” lose faith in a bank openly seeking assistance, vice president of the New York Fed’s markets group says, in what looks to be a brazen act of Orwellian doublethink. –ARK