As 2011 comes to a close and the holiday season is upon us, we can reflect on the causes of the various financial debacles we have had to live through this year. We’ve weathered yet another year of tough circumstances. Hopefully we have learned lessons from our mistakes that will not be repeated. If you have been following the news, it’s not easy to ignore the stories and events around the world which include MF Global’s bankruptcy, the Eurozone crisis, the payroll tax extension, and Occupy Wall Street. These events highlight the recurring inability of those in power to be accountable for their and our finances. If there is one lesson we can learn from this year’s events, I hope it is the value of financial transparency.

At the end of November, Federal documents of the 2007-2009 financial crisis were released to the public via the Freedom of Information Act. The figures of the bailouts are astounding: a total of $7.77 trillion was handed out to banking institutions. Of course these bailouts were funded under the premise that these institutions were too big to fail, and if they did it would be catastrophic. It’s a tired rhetoric, and these new reports do nothing to endear people to the story of “too big to fail”. Not only did these institutions assure investors that they were in no financial trouble, but they also made an estimated $13 billion by exploiting the Fed’s below-market rates. It is appalling that the truth of these reports has only recently been released.

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