Fed Gave Banks Eye-Popping Emergency Loans, Without Telling Congress

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt: "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. Bankers didn't 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 Fed's below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue."

Comments

World's dumbest loanshark

[John3]

Jon Stewart covered this topic quite well the other day. So essentially we (US Treasury) loaned the banks money at 0.01% and then they loaned us (US Treasury) the money back at a higher rate. WTF?

Re:Capitalism

[istartedi]

You sort of beat me to it, but I think the best word for what we have is simply cronyism. That gets you down to one -ism that describes it all. It applies mostly to corporations, but if you use the word cronymism it covers union corruption too. Anybody who opposes cronyism should be just as upset about the way bondholders were screwed in favor of unions during the GM bankruptcy as they are about the way banks are profiting.

Re:Basic macroeconomics

[John3]

--soapbox--

I'm speaking strictly from personal experience with my small business (hardware store employing 30 people) and what I hear from other small business owners both locally and in the hardware industry around the country, but the banks don't appear to be loaning anyone anything lately. Even with the Fed pumping money into the system they still aren't willing to loan it out to small businesses or individuals. Money is going to money, and that's doing nothing to help the businesses and individuals that are struggling.

--end-soapbox--