Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, was interviewed by Anne Kates Smith at Kiplinger about a bill that would give government auditors more access to the Fed’s books.

Asked about the transparency issues with the Fed, Baker explains:

Think about all the concern over the $800 billion spent through the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. Yet the Fed has more than doubled its balance sheet to nearly $2 trillion. You can see on the Fed’s Web site how much has gone to each of its lending facilities. But you don’t know how much Citibank might have borrowed, or Goldman Sachs.

More here. While I agree with him on this transparency issue, this is probably the only thing we agree on. This is the guy who wrote not only that Obama’s stimulus is working, but also that we need a much bigger stimulus. This is him in August:

The only way to prevent double-digit unemployment will be another, much bigger round of stimulus. The Obama stimulus threw out around $700 billion to counteract a $2.6 trillion two-year shortfall in demand.
The stimulus helped, but you can’t put out a forest fire with a few buckets of water. We need much more spending. The alternative is a much poorer country today and a poorer country for our children. If we could just teach Congress and the punditry a bit of economics, they would stop whining about the budget deficit and start thinking about how they can get 15 million people back to work.

You will note that there is no mention anywhere in this piece of the fact that only a small share of the stimulus money has been spent. It makes asking for more already kind of silly, doesn’t it? Not to mention that stimulus by spending is actually not working, has never worked, and probably never will.