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Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Bloomberg/Businessweek
Posted: December 6th, 2011
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-un...
The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing. The Fed didnt tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didnt mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Feds below-market rates. Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse. Details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger. When you see the dollars the banks got, its hard to make the case these were successful institutions, says Sherrod Brown, a Democratic Senator from Ohio who in 2010 introduced an unsuccessful bill to limit bank size. This is an issue that can unite the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on corruption and collusion between government officials and the largest financial firms, click here.
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