$7.77T
From Bloomberg:
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.
Obviously, this is the story of the day and I’ve been reading the comments at a variety of sites. After the seething anger subsides, the next question is how much the Fed has lent the banksters since then, as Dodd Frank imposes a two year wait on discount window disclosures.
Just as obviously, the shock waves from this disclosure are likely to be unprecedented in finally raising the ire of the average citizen, many of whom have up until now remained blithely uninterested in the Ponzi. Indeed, it may turn out that we are all part of the Occupy movement now.
Words such as outrageous fail to address this situation. Reasonable people will agree that this cannot stand. First of all, the Fed discount window must be closed and its operation, if not actually ended, must be investigated and reformed.
Secondly, the TBTF banks must be broken up, their assets sold and management prosecuted.
Finally, we must ensure transparency exists in the marketplace so that this can never happen again.
Those who champion a free market economy must never be listened to again.
As a citizen, you have a duty to read every word of the cited article.
And while we wait for the terrible reaction, read the Rolling Stone article which explains How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich.
From Felix Salmon at Reuters:
On September 16, 2008, Morgan Stanley owed $21.5 billion to the Fed. The next day, that number doubled, to $40.5 billion. And eight working days later, on the 29th, the bank’s total borrowings from the Fed reached $107 billion. The Fed didn’t blink: it kept on lending, as much as it could, to any bank which needed the money, because, in a crisis, that’s its job.
Lest you think this is all behind us, somebody hit the Fed up for $88B just last week.
