$16 Trillion in secret 0% loans. More than the total US debt today ($14.5 T)

[Scuba]

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

..snip..

The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. "As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," said Sanders. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."

Among the investigation's key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. "No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president," Sanders said.

The non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress also determined that the Fed lacks a comprehensive system to deal with conflicts of interest, despite the serious potential for abuse. In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans.

For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed's board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed's emergency lending programs.


...end snip..

[polichick]

1. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged,...

...you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."

Absolutely!

Thank-you Bernie Sanders!!!

[gratuitous]

2. Duplicative post

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1565748

And I'll go with my response here that I posted there:

That $16.1 trillion figure is made up of several repeated loans of the same money. For example, an emergency loan of, say, $5 billion in an overnight loan that was rolled over every day for a month would be counted at $150 billion under this accounting. The amount at risk was only $5 billion on any given day. So the $16.1 trillion figure doesn't represent the actual total dollar amount at risk from the loans.

But the point of "shared" sacrifice is valid: Because the banksters played irresponsibly with house money, the rest of us have to take it in the shorts so that the "too big to fail" financial institutions don't absorb the free market impact of their reckless ways. Now, while it may serve a certain logic to prop up the big financial institutions (as interconnected as global finance is, a failure here can ruin millions of people elsewhere), the major failure is the failure to enact any systemic reforms (viz. regulations, enforcement, etc.) to prevent a repeat of this fiasco. Instead, our political leaders seem determined not only to let the Big Money Boyz off the hook, but to reward them for being so irresponsible in the first place at the expense of everyone else, and leave the apparatus in place for it all to happen again.

[banned from Kos]

3. thanks. This crap won't die.

Its like kudzu in the South.

[Scuba]

4. We've got that invasive right here in Wisconsin!