Fed made $9 trillion in emergency overnight loans

Whoa! The Federal Reserve made $9 trillion in overnight loans to major banks and Wall Street firms during the financial crisis, according to newly revealed data released Wednesday. The loans were made through a special loan program set up by the Fed in the wake of the Bear Stearns collapse in March 2008 to keep the nation’s bond markets trading normally. The amount of cash being pumped out to the financial giants was not previously disclosed. All the loans were backed by collateral and all were paid back with a very low interest rate to the Fed – an annual rate of between 0.5% to 3.5%. Still, the total amount was a surprise, even to some who had followed the Fed’s rescue efforts closely. “That’s a real number, even for the Fed,” said FusionIQ’s Barry Ritholtz, author of the book “Bailout Nation.” While the fact that the markets were in trouble was already well known, he said the amount of help they needed is still surprising. “It makes it very clear this was a very serious, very unusual situation,” he said. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who had authored the provision of the financial reform law that required Wednesday’s disclosure, called the data that was released incredible and jaw-dropping. “The $700 billion Wall Street bailout turned out to be pocket change compared to trillions and trillions of dollars in near zero interest loans and other financial arrangements that the Federal Reserve doled out to every major financial institution,” Sanders said. He said that even if the Fed was right to make the loans to keep the economy from toppling into a depression, it should have made stronger demands that the banks help American consumers and small businesseses. “They may have repaid their loans, but that’s not good enough,” he said. “It’s clear the demands the Fed made were not enough.” The Wall Street firm that received the most assistance was Merrill Lynch, which received $2.1 trillion, spread across 226 loans. The firm did not survive the crisis as an independent company, and was purchased by Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) just as Lehman Brothers was failing. Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), which ended up with a majority of its shares owned by the Treasury Department due to a separate federal bailout, was No. 2 on the list with 279 loans totaling $2 trillion. Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500) was third with $1.9 trillion coming from 212 loans. “As we have previously disclosed, Morgan Stanley utilized some of the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending facilities during a time of immense financial turmoil throughout the banking sector and the broader market,” Morgan Stanley said in a statement Wednesday. "The Fed’s actions were timely and critical, and we commend them for providing liquidity and stabilizing the financial system during that period.’’ The largest single loan was by Barclays Capital, which borrowed $47.9 billion on Sept. 18, 2008, in the days after the Lehman bankruptcy. http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/01/news/economy/fed_reserve_data_release/index.htm?hpt=T1