Foreign Firms Received Funds

Wall Street Journal ^ | Thursday, December 2, 2010 | Jon Hilsenrath and Liz Rappaport

[BenLurkin]

The Federal Reserve, forced by Congress to release details on trillions of dollars' worth of loans made during the financial crisis, disclosed the breadth of its lending to U.S. businesses desperate to raise cash and the surprising degree to which it supported struggling foreign banks in the worst days of 2008 and 2009.

The lending, most of which has been paid back, represents the Fed's most aggressive intervention in the economy ever, and included loans to stalwart industrial companies such as General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE - News) and Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ - News) Though the Fed has been credited with helping prevent many banks and firms from collapsing as credit markets stopped functioning, critics also say the Fed overreached and the latest disclosures could open new fault lines.

Foreign banks received hundreds of billions of dollars in short-term loans from the Fed. Among the biggest loans from a Fed commercial-paper lending program was one to Swiss banking giant UBS AG (NYSE: UBS - News), which tapped it for $37 billion in October 2008. Barclays PLC (NYSE: BCS - News), the British bank that declined to rescue Lehman Brothers but later bought much of it from bankruptcy, tapped the Fed for roughly $10 billion in commercial-paper loans in October 2008.

Government officials at the time were concerned the failure of another big financial firm after the collapse of Lehman Brothers would severely damage the global economy.

Also on the list was the banking arm of the Korean government, foreign auto makers and other foreign firms that held U.S. mortgage-backed securities they couldn't sell when financial markets froze.

[Logical me]

Illegal transfer of money and the money was backed by air. Paper crap not worth the paper it is printed on.

[NativeSon]

but I must pay higher taxes, take food from my family's table because of the "poor economy"...

I want to see heads on pikes at the capitol steps

[FromLori]

Did you see the foreign banks even were allowed to offload mortgages onto us?

The measure, initiated in Jan. 2009 to stimulate the flow of credit and keep household borrowing costs low, led the nation’s central bank to purchase more than $1.1 trillion in mortgages packaged into the form of securities. The mortgage bonds are backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the twin mortgage giants NOW owned by taxpayers.

Deutsche Bank, a German lender, has sold the Fed more than $290 billion worth of mortgage securities, Fed data through July shows. Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, sold the Fed more than $287 billion in mortgage bonds.

much more here http://www.insurancemaking.com/business-general/55112-fed-opens-books-revealing-european-megabanks-were-biggest-beneficiaries.html

WHALEN: “FED LET THE REAL ECONOMY GO TO HELL” 12-1-2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8vFbZ4J8kQ