16 Trillion given to foreign and domestic banks and corps

[Pluvious]

I thought this was some kind of hoax, so I actually downloaded the GOA's report (11-696).
It's there right on page 131...

From 2008 thru 2010 we "lent" out $16,115 billion.

That's more than our GDP (14T), or our current debt !

I must be missing something - or is this all old news I somehow slept thru ?

---

The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve
can be found on page 131 of the GAO Audit and are as follows..

Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)

---

http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3

If they fought so hard to keep us from learning about this, I fear to
hear what else we've not found out.

[TheWraith]

1. Yes, you're missing something. None of that money exists.

The Fed habitually provides short, overnight loans to banks as part of their stabilization work. It's much smaller than that, say a few million here and there, but it happens very often. If you total up the amount of money lent, it looks like a vast amount, but the amount lent AT ANY GIVEN TIME is relatively small, probably a billion dollars or less.

[girl gone mad]

2. Please cite from the report..

where it is documented that during this financial crisis the Fed loans were short, overnight loans with only small amounts given out at any time, most paid back quickly, etc.

[TheWraith]

8. I'm citing from reality.

This is the way the Federal Reserve Bank operates. Do you believe that they magically conjured $16 trillion dollars, more than the entire US GDP, out of their hats to just give away? Or that anyone on the planet Earth could come up with that much money at one time?

[girl gone mad]

3. To quote economist Michael Hudson:

"..if the Treasury and Federal Reserve can create $13 trillion of public obligations – money – electronically on computer keyboards, there really is no Social Security problem at all, no Medicare shortfall, no inability of the American government to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. "

As to the amounts in question:

"The government took over the mortgage lending guarantors Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (privatizing the profits, “socializing” the losses) for $5.3 trillion – almost as much as the entire national debt. The Treasury lent $700 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Plan (TARP) to Wall Street’s largest banks and brokerage houses. The latter re-incorporated themselves as “banks” to get Federal Reserve handouts and access to the Fed’s $2 trillion in “cash for trash” swaps crediting Wall Street with Fed deposits for otherwise “illiquid” loans and securities (the euphemism for toxic, fraudulent or otherwise insolvent and unmarketable debt instruments) – at “cost” based on full mark-to-model fictitious valuations.

Altogether, the post-2008 crash saw some $13 trillion in such obligations transferred onto the government’s balance sheet from high finance, euphemized as “the private sector” as if it were the core economy itself, rather than its calcifying shell."

http://michael-hudson.com/2011/06/how-a-13-trillion-cover-story-was-written

Looks like the lending in Bernie's audit is in addition to this.

[Enthusiast]

7. PLUS ONE!

A pox on their house. And I mean that most sincerely.

[grahamhgreen]

4. Kick. All to prop up 1 quadrillion of worthless derivatives.

[jwirr]

5. All a waste of money.

[RegieRocker]

6. I do not want to hear, I do not want to see, I know it all.

[bigwillq]

9. K and R (nt)

[RegieRocker]

10. Now tie this to the Debt Crisis and you will have figured it out.

They are still paying for scam derivatives to American and Foreign investors and have run out of money. Now do you get it? All this at the taxpayer's expense. Nice.