Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion

[Riot]

This should cause so many more Americans to immediately march on Washington, that OWS would look like a small private party.

Hello? Anybody there?

If only the Fed had divvied up half of this in a bailout of American citizens ...

The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-1...in-income.html

[jms62]

Originally Posted by Riot

This should cause so many more Americans to immediately march on Washington, that OWS would look like a small private party.

Hello? Anybody there?

If only the Fed had divvied up half of this in a bailout of American citizens ...

Because everyone is so focused on the "Real" problem, payments to unemployed and OWS

[dellinger63]

The $200-$300 billion to Fannie and Freddie, that is gone, seems to be a much bigger deal than the $13 billion profit, banks made off Fed money, they paid back but that's just me.

And to think this administration actually had the 'balls' to recently say the multi-million dollar bonuses given to Fannie/ Freddie execs were justified in order to retain top talent.

[Riot]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-1...ae-rescue.html

Slogging through 21,000 FOIA documents to put this together ... Bloomberg is going to get a Pulitzer for this. Nothing but more and more coming out over the next weeks. It's the Watergate of this time. OWS has been demanding prosecution, now every citizen should.

Addition: at least some are standing up against those who crashed our economy

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1...n_1117140.html

Citigroup Settlement Tossed: Federal Judge tells SEC to get it together

In a potentially precedent setting ruling on Monday, a federal judge in New York tossed out a settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Citigroup, effectively telling the SEC -- which is responsible for protecting investors and maintaining fair, orderly markets -- that it isn't going far enough in holding financial institutions accountable for their wrongdoings.

The SEC accused Citigroup of selling investors mortgage-backed bonds that the bank knew would lose value. Citi netted roughly $160 million in profits from the sale of these bonds while investors lost more than $700 million. Under the proposed settlement with the SEC, the bank would have had to pay $285 million in penalties and fees, but would not have had to admit to any wrongdoing, according to the court decision.

More:

Bloomberg is reporting this morning that Henry Paulson, Bush's Treasury Secretary, gave advance notice of bailout plans for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to a group of powerful hedge fund operators.

One fund manager at the meeting was so shocked that he went to his lawyer afterwards. His lawyer advised him to stop all trading immediately on Fannie/Freddie shares.

Here are some relevant paragraphs from the article:

Note how this info was given to Paulson's friends and Goldman alumni -- not to fund managers at Fidelity and Vanguard, who manage the 401(k) plans of working people.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/1...ts?via=siderec

[Riot]

Originally Posted by dellinger63

The $200-$300 billion to Fannie and Freddie, that is gone, seems to be a much bigger deal than the $13 billion profit, banks made off Fed money, they paid back but that's just me.

I think you're confusing this with TARP.

[dellinger63]

Originally Posted by Riot

I think you're confusing this with TARP.

I'm talking about the $7.7 trillion total the Fed loaned out at below market rates that was paid back. What I'd like to see is the breakdown of what loans/profits went to US owned banks as opposed to foreign owned banks.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by dellinger63

I'm talking about the $7.7 trillion total the Fed loaned out at below market rates that was paid back. What I'd like to see is the breakdown of what loans/profits went to US owned banks as opposed to foreign owned banks.

That's what Bloomberg is trying to reveal here (although that's pretty well known already, for TARP), with their FOIA request, searching through thousands and thousands of redacted memos and trying to put two and two together.

Dell, this is $13 billion beyond TARP, before TARP, outside of TARP - multiple people lying to Congress while TARP was being approved, multiple loans to keep companies solvent and lying about it and covering it up before TARP, favors to the financial sector. We were lied to during Bush, and during Obama. Go back to the first Bloomberg article I linked. This is huge. Or should be, if the American public can rip their horror away from, "The President didn't say the word God in his internet Thanksgiving speech" for a moment. It's so easy to tell Americans what to think, to distract us, so those in power can take more away from us. "Look, a Kenyan!" Click, treat. Right now, they are trying to take away internet freedom. Are you even aware of that?

Occupy Wall Street is precisely correct: Washington is owned by Wall Street, and our democracy is over if we don't try to take it back and re-create it now.