SPDR S&P 500 (SPY)

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The Fed was secretly funneling Trillions of Dollars to the Big Banks during the financial crisis. Pittman had already shared in a Gerald Loeb award for Bloomberg’s five-part series, “Wall Street’s Faustian Bargain,” and many felt he was a lock for a Pulitzer. But one week before Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was to sit for his Senate Confirmation hearing on his reappointment to another term as Fed Chairman, Pittman died of a heart attack at age 52 on November 25, 2009.

At the time of Pittman’s death, the Fed was still refusing to release the details of its secret loans, despite losing its court battle at the Federal District Court. The appellate court decision against the Fed would not come until March 19, 2010, four months after Pittman’s death. Even then, the Fed did not release the data. First it asked for a rehearing by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. When that was rejected, a Wall Street consortium of banks, that were the recipients of the trillions of dollars in secret loans, appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. That appeal failed as well and the Fed was forced to release its data in 2011. When all of its bailout programs were tallied up, the tab came to a staggering, cumulative $29 trillion – all transacted without the involvement or awareness of anyone elected to office by the American people.