We’ve all heard the same argument in different contexts—the argument that the public has no right or need to know important information because some officials think it would hurt the public’s interests if the information got out.

We’ve heard it when the issue is police brutality. Oh, no, we’re told, if that’s examined too closely, it would hurt the morale of police officers who protect us. We’ve heard it when the issue is a possible war crimes or torture. Oh, no, we’re told, if we look at that too closely, our fighting men and women, our CIA operatives, will be afraid to do their duty. And now we’re hearing it from the Federal Reserve.

The issue in this instance is who got hundreds of billions of dollars in public money — our money — while the Fed was doing its save-the-banking-system number. More specifically, what are the identities of 11 lenders who got a huge chunk of this swag. A federal judge says the information must be made public in response to a Freedom of Information suit. But the Fed is appealing, claiming its concerned this will not only hurt the recipient companies’ reputations, but upset future government actions on behalf of the economy.

Oh, please. Hurt the reputations of these 11 large financial company recipients? Like anyone but themselves (and the Fed) think they’re anything but too-big-to-fail moochers. Reduce the ability of the Fed to deal with future crises? Like everyone but Wall Street analysts, economists, and Fed planners don’t know that the way the Fed deals with crises saves the bacon of big financial institutions and leaves the rest of us in the dumps.

Let the sun shine in on your past deeds, Mr. Bernanke. And if you’re too ashamed of what you’ve done, too ashamed to let your employers — us — know what you’ve done, perhaps it’s time to return to the halls of academia.