Yay!

Someone’s going up against the Fed and JP Morgan Chase for the shady back-room bailout of Bear Stears.

In a first step toward challenging the bailout, Inner City Press questioned the legality of the Fed approving the deal without public notice, on the grounds Bear Stearns “is not a banking holding company and does not own a bank.”

The Fed approved financing to Bear Stearns through JPMorgan in an emergency meeting Friday morning.

It was the Fed’s first rescue of a broker since the Great Depression and its latest effort to soothe financial markets roiled by fallout from rising mortgage defaults.

But Matthew Lee, executive director of Inner City Press, vowed to take all needed legal actions against the deal.

“The Fed has hit a new low with this, they did nothing to protect consumers from predatory lending and now their response is to bail out one of the most notorious enablers of predatory lending with no benefit to struggling consumers,” said Lee.

Good for them, hope it means something.