Glia
12-03-2011, 10:55 PM
FOCUS: Bailout Was Really $7.77 Trillion
By Adam Martin
The Atlantic Wire
29 November 11
https://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/320-80/8648-focus-bailout-was-really-777-trillion
Remember the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program with
which the federal government came to the rescue of faltering
banks in 2008? Well, according to a Bloomberg report, that
was just a fraction of the financial help the Federal Reserve
Bank wound up doling out to troubled lenders. The real total
was reportedly closer to $8 trillion, after you add up
benefits outside TARP, including emergency loans given at
below-market rates:
The amount of money the central bank parceled out was
surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal
Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he
"wasn’t aware of the magnitude." It dwarfed the Treasury
Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief
Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and
the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to
rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of
everything produced in the U.S. that year.
Bloomberg came up with that number after reviewing "29,000
pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000
transactions." Bloomberg adds, "The Fed didn’t tell anyone
which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined
$1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day."
That's nearly twice the amount made public in TARP.
By Adam Martin
The Atlantic Wire
29 November 11
https://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/320-80/8648-focus-bailout-was-really-777-trillion
Remember the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program with
which the federal government came to the rescue of faltering
banks in 2008? Well, according to a Bloomberg report, that
was just a fraction of the financial help the Federal Reserve
Bank wound up doling out to troubled lenders. The real total
was reportedly closer to $8 trillion, after you add up
benefits outside TARP, including emergency loans given at
below-market rates:
The amount of money the central bank parceled out was
surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal
Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he
"wasn’t aware of the magnitude." It dwarfed the Treasury
Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief
Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and
the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to
rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of
everything produced in the U.S. that year.
Bloomberg came up with that number after reviewing "29,000
pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000
transactions." Bloomberg adds, "The Fed didn’t tell anyone
which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined
$1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day."
That's nearly twice the amount made public in TARP.