You know the old joke about how "Trust me" translates to "Fuck you"? It seems like Hank Paulson thinks it's funny, too. Bloomberg:

The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. ...

Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

Wait a minute. Two trillion? I thought it was one trillion. Now it's two? Pretty soon we're going to be talking real money here!

The Fed made the loans under terms of 11 programs, eight of them created in the past 15 months, in the midst of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed's lending is significant because the central bank has stepped into a rescue role that was also the purpose of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, bailout plan -- without safeguards put into the TARP legislation by Congress.

And if you're asking for trust, it's not a wise strategy to start out by lying:

``We need oversight,'' Paulson told lawmakers. ``We need protection. We need transparency. I want it. We all want it.'' ....

Look, I'd just hate to think that the Bush + Reid + Pelosi + Obama + Paulson bailout bill turned out to be a slush fund for Big Money, but Occam's razor makes it pretty hard to avoid any other conclusion.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg -- the press, God save us -- is doing the right thing:

Bloomberg News has requested details of the Fed lending under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure.

Good for Bloomberg. It would be nice to see a sternly worded letter from the Dems on this. Instead, we get this from Barney Frank:

Frank said the Fed shouldn't reveal the assets it holds or how it values them because of ``delicacy with respect to pricing.'' He said such disclosure would ``give people clues to what your pricing is and what they might be able to sell us and what your estimates are.'' He wouldn't say why he thought that information would be problematic.

I can't imagine why. Can you?

We're a year into this thing and still nobody knows how big the Big Shitpile is.

Why is that? Is the whole Village going naked? I don't go to the doctor because I have no way to pay for what the doctor may find. So why go? Why isn't the Village getting a diagnosis on the Big Shitpile? Are they not getting the diagnosis because they can't pay for the treatment?

Could we have some leadership on this please? Maybe even some "hope" or "change"?

Because somehow I think the upcoming "economic stimulus package" isn't going to help this at all.