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In a recent letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Congressman Bill Posey joined with 25 of his fellow House Members in calling for documents detailing the Fed’s handling of the AIG bail-out to be made available to Members of the House Financial Services Committee and its staff. Aides to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs have already been granted access to such documents on the matter, but not in the House.

“We still have many serious questions surrounding the AIG bailouts,” said Posey. “Every taxpayer has the right to know the role of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury in these monumental and costly decisions. I join my colleagues in calling for transparency and accountability in this and other actions by the Federal Reserve throughout the financial crisis. The American people deserve to know all the facts and by continuing to withhold information on how billions of dollars in taxpayer money was spent, the Federal Reserve is further abusing the taxpayer.”

The letter to Chairman Bernanke states “the ongoing government rescue of the American International Group, Inc. (AIG) has raised serious concerns regarding a lack of transparency surrounding the commitment of billions of taxpayer dollars, including the payment of over $60 billion to AIG’s counterparties on certain credit default swap transactions. Recent disclosures that the New York Fed attempted to prevent public disclosure of information related to these transactions by directing AIG to delete the counterparty names and payment information from the company’s draft regulatory filing are extremely troubling.” To view the letter in full, click here.