Foreign Banks Used Fed Secret Lifeline Most at Crisis Peak

by Jen Sat Apr 02, 2011 12:31 pm

Foreign Banks Used Fed Secret Lifeline Most at Crisis Peak

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-01/foreign-banks-tapped-fed-s-lifeline-most-as-bernanke-kept-borrowers-secret.html

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s two-year fight to shield crisis-squeezed banks from
the stigma of revealing their public loans protected a lender to
local governments in Belgium, a Japanese fishing-cooperative
financier and a company part-owned by the Central Bank of Libya.
Dexia SA (DEXB), based in Brussels and Paris, borrowed as much as
$33.5 billion through its New York branch from the Fed’s
“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 97-year-old 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 bank’s role in
global financial markets.
“The caricature of the Fed is that it was shoveling money
to big New York banks and a bunch of foreigners, and that is not
conducive to its long-run reputation,” said Vincent Reinhart,
the Fed’s director of monetary affairs from 2001 to 2007.

by Gigi Sat Apr 02, 2011 2:21 pm

Why didn't Congress do something in 2009 instead of letting the Federal Reserve Bank go on with this?

Sen. Sanders Goes Off on Bernanke 03/03/09

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCWXrMCGJT4

Dollar Collapse by Bernanke

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqfbA6a8rd0&feature=related

Foreign Banks Used Fed Secret Lifeline Most at Crisis Peak

Foreign Banks Used Fed Secret Lifeline Most at Crisis Peak

Re: Foreign Banks Used Fed Secret Lifeline Most at Crisis Peak