It's pretty easy to complain. When a group which operates with power granted to it by law but is uncontrolled by the public and which operates in great secrecy from the public starts giving special deals to private companies, it brings up a few concerns, including things like equal protection and governmental favors. Would a smaller motorcycle company have been given loans in critical times? Would a motorcycle company that didn't have political ties or which had certain political enemies have been given that loan?
Would a company smaller than Harley Davidson get a "loan"? Maybe not. But if we're talking about commercial paper, we might not be talking about companies coming to the Fed hat-in-hand for a payoff; we may be talking about the Fed stepping in to fulfill a function that would under any ordinary circumstance be handled by the banking system. Remember, commercial paper apparently locked up solid during the crisis.
It's still not clear that another motorcycle company would receive the same deal as Harley Davidson. Surely Harley Davidson wasn't the only motorcycle company affected by the commercial paper freeze. Was it a good idea for the Fed to step in and fulfill that function? Maybe. But that doesn't mean it was ideal and there's nothing to complain about.
Complaints are only valuable insofar as they are constructive.
What should they have done differently? If bank lending really was frozen solid, is the argument that it would have been better for the Fed not to make these loans, and not turn a profit in doing so?
There's some vague hand waving here about competitors who may also have been affected by the credit freeze who may not have received similar details, but I'm not seeing any specifics.
Are you simply complaining that there may be something to complain about?
I'm not certain anything could have been done differently. At least not at the late stage that the Fed had to act. Then again, I'm a programmer and not a central banker. I'm mainly complaining that the situation was allowed to get to the point where the Fed had to take these kinds of drastic and secretive actions and that they did it without any oversight.
The "ordinary banking system" is not meant to be a public utility. Large or small, if the Fed is supporting the market, it is making decisions about resource allocation.
I'm not even always against the government making such decisions.
It's just the bailout involved the government making these decision in the worst possible circumstance, the least democratic, the least open and the most remunerative-to-bad-actors circumstances.
