Posted on 11/28/2011 9:29:35 AM PST by mandaladon
A one-time limited GAO audit of the Federal Reserve that was mandated by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has uncovered some eye-popping corruption at the Fed and the mainstream media is barely even covering it.
It turns out that the Federal Reserve made $16.1 trillion in secret loans to their banker friends during the financial crisis.
These loans only went to the “too big to fail” banks and to foreign financial institutions. Not a penny of these loans went to small banks or to ordinary Americans. Not only did the bankers get trillions in nearly interest-free loans, but the Fed actually paid them over 600 million dollars to help run the emergency lending program. The GAO investigation revealed some absolutely stunning conflicts of interest, and yet the mainstream media does not even seem interested. Solid evidence of the looting of America has been put right in front of us, and yet hardly anyone wants to talk about it.
Many Americans have a hard time grasping just how large 16.1 trillion dollars is. It is an amount of money that is almost inconceivable. It is more than the GDP of the United States for an entire year. It is more than the U.S. government has spent over the last four years combined.
The Federal Reserve was just creating gigantic piles of cash out of thin air and throwing them around with wild abandon.
One of the only members of Congress that has wanted to talk about the GAO audit has been U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. The following is a statement about this audit that was taken from his official website….
(Excerpt) Read more at teaparty.org ...
Bernanke should be sent to jail for this.
Burn the place down!
Bernanke sounds like an economic monster.
I wonder if that Fed money is what the large banks used to pay off the TARP loans. We keep hearing what a good investment TARP was and how we’ve “made money” on the loans but this suggests it was all just a shell game. Just like GM using one set of govt. loans to pay back another set of loans and then crowing how that makes their bailout such a great deal.
So they “paid back” the original trillion while borrowing 16 trillion more? I’m not impressed.
Not this misinformation again!
$16 Trillion as in an average of $12.5 billion a day in overnight loans over the course of 3.5 years = $16 trillion in loans. But $16 trillion was never outstanding at any given time, only a few billion.
And all of those loans were secured with collateral and were repaid with interest. The horrors!
The Federal Reserve made $82 billion in profits last year, all of which gets transferred back to the U.S. Treasury.
So yes, string up Bernanke for doing a wonderful job. Nevermind that the real problem is congressional overspending and bad trade policies. It must be the FED’s fault!
Are you people even reading what you're posting?
Bawney Fwank sees the hand writing on the wall and is getting the hell out of Dodge. Although you’d think we would think prison is just FABULOUS!
“we”=”he”
BurnYankee is a real piece of work.
Oh, no, they say he’s got to borrow
Borrow, borrow, Fedzilla!
Oh, no, there goes the budget
Borrow, borrow, Fedzilla!
The price tag for the Wall Street bailout is often put at $700 billion—the size of the Troubled Assets Relief Program. But TARP is just the best known program in an array of more than 30 overseen by Treasury Department and Federal Reserve that have paid out or put aside money to bail out financial firms and inject money into the markets. To get a sense of the size of the real $14 trillion bailout, see our chart here. Below, a guide to the pieces of the puzzle:
Treasury Department bailout programs
(Remember that Obama's Treasury Dept was controlled by his then-COS Rahm Emanuel---a G/S lobbyist in the WH)
Money Market Mutual Fund: In September 2008, the Treasury announced that it would insure the holdings of publicly offered money market mutual funds. According to the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), these guarantees could have potentially cost the federal government more than $3 trillion [PDF].
Public-Private Investment Fund: This joint Treasury-Federal Reserve program bought toxic assets from banks and brokerages—as much as $5 billion of assets per firm. According to SIGTARP, the government's potential exposure from the PPIF is between $500 million and $1 trillion [PDF].
TARP: As part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Treasury has made loans to or investments more than 750 banks and financial institutions. $650 billion has been paid out (not including HAMP; see below). As of December 21, 2009, $117.5 billion of that has been repaid.
Government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) stock purchase: The Treasury has bought $200 million in preferred stock from Fannie Mae and another $200 million from Freddie Mac [PDF] to show that they "will remain viable entities critical to the functioning of the housing and mortgage markets."
GSE mortgage-backed securities purchase: Under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, the Treasury may buy mortgage-backed securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to SIGTARP, these purchases could cost as much as $314 billion ---SNIP---.
LONG READ---go to web site to read more and checkout the shocking charts.
SOURCE http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/behind-real-size-bailout
If I shove $20K in your pocket and start auto payments from your bank at gunpoint for my payback, did you borrow $20K from me? :-)
There's just a lil too much secrecy at the not so federal reserve.
Where is the freakin outrage by our representatives? The only elected official I've ever heard utter a peep is Ron Paul.
That's not a Paul endorsement on my part, just an observation. I'm totally pissed that we hear nothing from our elected leaders.
They have got to be in on this crap.
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