Obama fails to deliver transparency

Just like the financial markets, Bloomberg reports on how the Obama administration also failed to deliver transparency into government.

More than half of President Barack Obama’s cabinet agencies continue to defy open-government rules by not disclosing the cost of travel by top officials....

“I’m concerned about the overall transparency arc for Obama’s second term,” said John Wonderlich, policy director at Washington-based open-government group the Sunlight Foundation. “Has he given up on that mantle of being the transparency reformer?”....
“What this study shows is that, even for straightforward documents, it takes way too long and agencies really need to focus more on improving their FOIA process,” said Rick Blum, coordinator for the Sunshine in Government Initiative, an Arlington, Virginia-based coalition of media groups. “It should be a matter of days, not months and certainly not years.”...

“That’s enormously disappointing and very troubling,” said Anne Weismann, chief counsel for the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government, a Washington-based group that files frequent open-record requests. The response rate shows that “they are big on ideas, but short on implementation.”... 

The president pledged in an executive order to improve government transparency through technology upgrades and interagency reviews. He also instructed agencies that disclosure should be the default position on most requests.

Wouldn't you think that this should have been applied to the financial markets and in particular banks and structured finance securities?

Holder followed up Obama’s statement with his own directive in March 2009, ordering government agencies to review their internal FOIA rules to improve response records, in part to comply with the OPEN Government Act passed by Congress in 2007. In the memo, Holder said that timeliness of FOIA responses was “an essential component of transparency.” 

Your humble blogger has been making this exact point about timeliness being an essential component of transparency when it comes to structured finance securities.  I illustrate it using a clear plastic bag for timely disclosure and a brown paper bag for out of date disclosure.

That instruction didn’t have a big impact on the workings of government....

Particularly the government agencies that regulate the financial markets.

“The policy directives from the Obama administration have been great, but the implementation is only halfway to the mark,” said Thomas Blanton... 

Darrell Issa, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, agreed that the president has a mixed record. 

“While I applaud the Obama administration for setting high goals on transparency, too often their rhetoric about what’s supposed to happen obscures a real lack of progress,” Issa said in an e-mailed statement. “Officials too often try to stop or delay release of the most telling information.”

This has been absolutely true when it comes to the SEC with regards to structured finance securities and the combination of the SEC, Fed and OCC when it comes to banks.