Mark Pittman (October 25, 1957 - November 25, 2009) was a financial journalist covering corporate finance and derivative markets.

"Sues Federal Reserve

Around September – October 2008, as the financial meltdown was taking place,
Pittman and his Bloomberg colleagues, including Bob Ivry,
were covering the bailout story as it was happening
and they started wondering what they could do to show the big picture.

They discovered the amount going to prop up the financial system
dwarfed the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

...it wasn't clear in all cases where the money was going.

...A number of the programs at the Federal Reserve were unclear
as to who was getting funds
and what sort of collateral the government was getting in return for the loans.

Pittman decided he wanted to find out who was borrowing from the Federal Reserve,
how much they were borrowing
and what kind of collateral the Fed was getting in return.

He filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request
to gain records about taxpayer-financed policies
that were being withheld from the public,
to wit, where the Fed had lent 2 trillion taxpayer dollars
and what it was getting in return.

The Fed denied the request, he appealed and they denied it again.

Saying "It's not Ben Bernanke's money, it's our money",
Pittman then decided to sue the Fed in federal court,
making headlines as the first person to ever sue the Federal Reserve."

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Fed Defies Transparency Aim in Refusal to Disclose

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.

...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.

...The Fed made the loans under terms of 11 programs,
eight of them created in the past 15 months...

...In a Sept. 22 campaign speech, Obama promised to
``make our government open and transparent
so that anyone can ensure that our business is the people's business.''

...Fed governors relaxed the collateral standards on Sept. 14.

...The Fed lent cash and government bonds to banks,
which gave the Fed collateral in the form of equities and debt,
including subprime and structured securities such as collateralized debt obligations...

...The nation's biggest banks, Citigroup, Bank of America Corp.,
JPMorgan Chase, xxxxyyyy, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley,
declined to comment on whether they have borrowed money from the Fed.

...The Bloomberg lawsuit argues that the collateral lists
``are central to understanding and assessing the government's response
to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression.''

Bloomberg