There really does need to be a lot more openness from the Federal Reserve. The taxpayers aren’t an unlimited ATM for Wall Street yet that’s how it works. So besides the $45 billion lent to Lehman, the parent company had this other significant loan from a double top secret Fed fund. Why is it always so easy for Wall Street yet for the middle class, all they get are Medicare and Social Security cuts?

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEHMQ)’s brokerage borrowed as much as $18 billion in four separate loans from a previously secret program of the U.S. Federal Reserve in June 2008, three months before its parent filed the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history.

The program, which peaked at $80 billion in loans outstanding, was known as the Fed’s single-tranche open-market operations, or ST OMO. It made 28-day loans to units of 19 banks from March 7, 2008, to Dec. 30, 2008. Bloomberg reported on ST OMO in May, after the Fed released incomplete records on the program. In response to a subsequent Freedom of Information Act request for details, the central bank disclosed borrower names, amounts borrowed and interest rates.

The Lehman brokerage, Lehman Brothers Inc., tapped the ST OMO program for as much as $5 billion in short term funding in March 2008, and lower amounts at other times during the month. It took as much as $10 billion in June as the credit crisis worsened, according to Fed data. The maximum outstanding for any period was $18 billion.