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Foreign Banks Tapped Feds Secret Lifeline Most at Crisis Peak
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Bloomberg
Posted: April 12th, 2011
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-01/foreign-banks-tappe...
Dexia SA (DEXB), based in Brussels and Paris, borrowed as much as $33.5 billion through its New York branch from the Feds discount window lending program, according to Fed documents released yesterday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Dublin-based Depfa Bank Plc, taken over in 2007 by a German real-estate lender later seized by the German government, drew $24.5 billion. The biggest borrowers from the ... discount window as the program reached its crisis-era peak were foreign banks, accounting for at least 70 percent of the $110.7 billion borrowed during the week in October 2008 when use of the program surged to a record. The disclosures may stoke a reexamination of the risks posed to U.S. taxpayers by the central banks role in global financial markets. Separate data disclosed in December on temporary emergency-lending programs set up by the Fed also showed big foreign banks as borrowers. Six European banks were among the top 11 companies that sold the most debt overall -- a combined $274.1 billion -- to the Commercial Paper Funding Facility. Those programs also loaned hundreds of billions of dollars to the biggest U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley.
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