Fed Hiding Data On What It Is Accepting as Collateral on Bailout Loans It Is Making

Bloomberg News on May 21 asked the Fed to provide data on the collateral posted between April 4 and May 20. The Fed said on June 19 that it needed until July 3 to search out the documents and determine whether it would make them public. Bloomberg never received a formal response that would enable it to file an appeal. On Oct. 25, Bloomberg filed another request and has yet to receive a reply.

Thus, on Friday, Bloomberg asked a U.S. court today to force the Federal Reserve to disclose securities the central bank is accepting on behalf of American taxpayers as collateral for $1.5 trillion of loans to banks, based on the Freedom of Information Act.

According to Bloomberg, the Fed staff planned to recommend that Bloomberg's request be denied under an exemption protecting ``confidential commercial information,'' according to Alison Thro, the Fed's FOIA Service Center senior counsel. The Fed in Washington has about 30 pages pertaining to the request, Thro said today before the filing of the suit. The bulk of the documents Bloomberg sought are at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which she said isn't subject to the freedom of information law.

``This type of information is considered highly sensitive, and it would remain so for some time in the future,'' Thro said.


The Fed has lent $1.5 trillion to banks, including Citigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., through programs such as its discount window, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility and the Term Securities Lending Facility. Which is above and beyond the $700billion approved by Congress in a bailout package.

Steve Jobs' Obituary

Bloomberg inadvertently ran Steve Jobs' obituary (17 pages long). Here are excerpts, including interesting pre-release instructions of who to contact for quotes:

JOB, STEVE. APPLE FOUNDER, TECH VISIONARY. UPDATED AUGUST 2008

HOLD FOR RELEASE - DO NOT USE - HOLD FOR RELEASE - DO NOT USE

Steve Jobs's birthday: Feb. 24, 1955
BIO UPDATED AS OF 2008, by Connie Guglielmo

APPLE PR CONTACTS: Katie Cotton — -redacted- and Steve Dowling: -redacted- or -redacted-

People to contact for comment:

- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak: -redacted-

- Jon Rubinstein, former head of Apple's iPod division. He's now
chairman at Palm. Contact Lynn Fox in PR.

- Heidi Roizen: venture capitalist who once dated Jobs: -redacted- or -redacted-. Heidi knows a lot of Silicon

Valley insiders and may put us in touch with others, including
A.C. Mike Markkula, the first VC to back Apple.

- Larry Ellison of Oracle (one of his best friends); contact
Deborah Hellinger in Oracle PR. -redacted-, -redacted-

- Jerry Brown (personal friend) and California AG. Try GARETH
LACY at -redacted- IN OAKLAND; -redacted- CELL, -redacted- or press office: -redacted-

- Al Gore: member of Apple's board of directors

- Bill Gates: Microsoft was among the first developers of Mac
software

- Bob Iger at Disney: who bought Pixar from Jobs

- Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google and member of Apple's board. Send
note to -redacted- or try David Krane: -redacted- or -redacted-

- Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel Corp. (Apple began using Intel
chips in its Macs in 2006). Contact Tom Beermann: -redacted- or
Bill Calder on -redacted-. Both in Intel PR

- Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Contact Shawn
Dainas in PR: -redacted-

- John Lassiter and Ed Catmull: Pixar-nee-Disney executives. Try
Zenia Mucha, -redacted- or Jonathan Friedland, -redacted-, in
corporate PR at Disney.

- Guy Kawasaki, one of the first Apple evangelists. -redacted- or -redacted-

- Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, who bought an early circuit
board for the game Breakout from Jobs and Wozniak. (pr is being
handled by his daughter, Alisa Bushnell. her cell is: -redacted-; work is -redacted- work/message;-redacted-)

Steve Jobs, who helped make personal computers as easy to use as telephones, changed the way animated films are made, persuaded consumers to tune into digital music and refashioned the mobile phone, has XXXX. He was TK. Jobs XXXX, TK said XXXXX.

A college dropout who co-founded Apple Inc., Jobs won ardent supporters by ushering "cool'' gadgets to market. He delivered the Macintosh, the first user-friendly computer, and conquered the online music industry with the iPod, making white ear buds fashionable. In 2007, he led Apple into the mobile-phone market with the Web-surfing iPhone. And as chief executive officer of Pixar animation studios, Jobs promoted computer-generated storytelling with movies including "Toy Story.''

"In terms of an inspirational leader, Steve Jobs is really the best I've ever met,'' Microsoft Corp. Co-Chairman Bill Gates said in January 1998 when asked to name the CEOs he most admired. "He's got a belief in the excellence of products. He's able to communicate that."


When Jobs was in the 10th grade at Homestead High School in Cupertino, he assured his then girlfriend Chris-Ann Brennan he was going to become a millionaire, ccording to the "Second Coming of Jobs" by Alan Deutschman.

"Steve had these dreams of becoming one of the great people that has companies and makes products that change the world," Steve Wozniak [with whom Jobs founded Apple] said in August 2008. "One of the few people like the Shakespeare's and Einstein's that get well known - he wanted to be in that group."

Jobs, who made a black turtleneck sweater and blue jeans his trademark,emphasized aesthetics in both the hardware and software used in the computer. The Mac became a fashion statement among graphic artists and students, his biggest customers early on.


In his quest to create what he called "insanely great" products,Jobs earned a reputation for being mercurial, sometimes screaming at his employees, according to biographer Deutschman. "It's painful when you have some people who are not the best people in the world," Jobs said in a 1995 oral history interview with the Smithsonian Institution. "My job has sometimes exactly been that - to get rid of some people who didn't measure up."

At the annual Macworld Expo computer show in January 1998, Jobs finished a 90-minute speech and was about to walk off stage when he paused. "I almost forgot. We're profitable". The crowd of 4,000 people, anxious about whether Apple would survive, roared its approval.


Questions about Jobs's health resurfaced in June 2008 after he appeared at the company's annual developer's conference looking visibly thinner. Jobs had said on Aug 1 2004, he had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in his pancreas. His form of cancer, called a neuroendocrine tumor, can be cured if diagnosed in time, as his was, he wrote at the time to employees in an e-mail from his hospital bed.

Jobs, a Buddhist and a vegetarian, kept his cancer a secret for nine months as he sought alternatives to surgery.

Jobs had a personal fortune estimated at $5.4 billion, according to Forbes magazine's annual survey of the world's richest people in March 2008.

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work," Jobs told Stanford students in 2005. "The only way to do great work is to love what you do."

Survivors include wife Laurene Powell, children Lisa Brennan-Jobs, Eve, Erin Sienna and Reed Paul, and sister Patti Jobs and Mona Simpson.