Backdoor Bailouts: Banks Play Shell Game with Taxpayer Dollars

[ProudDad]

In case you don't remember way back when Bush-Obama sold us out to the banksters...

"The Federal Reserve propped up banks with big infusions of cash during the depths of the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. Banks that took billions of dollars from the Fed <WITH LOW OR NO INTEREST> then turned around and loaned money back to the federal government <AT HIGH INTEREST RATES>. It was a sweet deal for the bankers. They received interest payments on the government securities that were up to 12 times greater than the Fed's rock bottom rates, according to a Congressional Research Service analysis conducted for Sen. Bernie Sanders.

"This report confirms that ultra-low interest loans provided by the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis turned out to be direct corporate welfare to big banks," Sanders said. "Instead of using the Fed loans to reinvest in the economy, some of the largest financial institutions in this country appear to have lent this money back to the federal government at a higher rate of interest by purchasing U.S. government securities."

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/04/26

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But of course Obama's "brain trust" of Clintonite and Bushite free marketeers (summers, geitner, et al) could have told him all about this, right?

Probably they did and he's such a true-blue product of Harvard Law that he thought it was a good idea...