Federal Reserve Releases Bail Out Details

The Federal Reserve released 21,000 transactions, mainly short term loans, from the financial crisis.

Many of the transactions, conducted through a variety of broad-based lending facilities, provided liquidity to financial institutions and markets through fully secured, mostly short-term loans. Purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) supported mortgage and housing markets, lowered longer-term interest rates, and fostered economic growth. Dollar liquidity swap lines with foreign central banks helped stabilize dollar funding markets abroad, thus contributing to the restoration of stability in U.S. markets. Other transactions provided liquidity to particular institutions whose disorderly failure could have severely stressed an already fragile financial system.

As financial conditions have improved, the need for the broad-based facilities has dissipated, and most were closed earlier this year. The Federal Reserve followed sound risk-management practices in administering all of these programs, incurred no credit losses on programs that have been wound down, and expects to incur no credit losses on the few remaining programs. These facilities were open to participants that met clearly outlined eligibility criteria; participation in them reflected the severe market disruptions during the financial crisis and generally did not reflect participants' financial weakness.

Here's what's available from the Fed's press release:

  • Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (AMLF)
  • Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF)
  • Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF)
  • Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF)
  • Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF)
  • TSLF Options Program (TOP)
  • Term Auction Facility (TAF)
  • Agency MBS purchases
  • Dollar liquidity swap lines with foreign central banks
  • Assistance to Bear Stearns, including Maiden Lane
  • Assistance to American International Group, including Maiden Lane II and III

Additionally, discount window and open market operation transactions after July 21, 2010, will be posted with a two-year lag.

The data made available Wednesday can be downloaded in multiple formats, including Excel, at www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/reform_transaction.htm.

A two year lag on the discount window? That's not useful. Regardless, this is a lot of data so we might start examining it and more posts will be written as we locate information, data and analysis.

Matt Stoller, wrote a piece on Naked Capitalism, End The Fed. It's kind of a history, noting the increasing Populist angst and concern, on what the Federal Reserve is doing generally. He quotes the Dodd-Frank law on what the Fed is supposed to tell the American people, which is why the above information was released at all:

(c) PUBLICATION OF BOARD ACTIONS.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Board of Governors shall publish on its website, not later than December 1, 2010, with respect to all loans and other financial assistance provided during the period beginning on December 1, 2007 and ending on the date of enactment of this Act under the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, the Term Securities Lending Facility, the Term Auction Facility, Maiden Lane, Maiden Lane II, Maiden Lane III, the agency Mortgage-Backed Securities pro- gram, foreign currency liquidity swap lines, and any other program created as a result of section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act (as so designated by this title)—
(1) the identity of each business, individual, entity, or foreign central bank to which the Board of Governors or a Federal reserve bank has provided such assistance;
(2) the type of financial assistance provided to that business, individual, entity, or foreign central bank;
(3) the value or amount of that financial assistance;
(4) the date on which the financial assistance was provided;
(5) the specific terms of any repayment expected, including
the repayment time period, interest charges, collateral, limitations on executive compensation or dividends, and other material terms; and
(6) the specific rationale for each such facility or program

This is from page 754 of the Dodd-Frank Fianncial Reform bill.

Matt Stoller was a congressional staffer to Alan Grayson, who raised a lot of hell in Congress on the bail outs, but lost his race this election during the Democrat purge.

The Huffington Post is running a real time post as details are discovered in this massive amount of information. Here are the first ones:

Wall Street firms teetering on the verge of collapse pledged more than $1.3 trillion in junk-rated securities to the Federal Reserve for cheap overnight loans - almost a quarter of all the long-term securities pledged to the Fed with a credit rating.

Foreign banks made out like bandits. It's to be determined if these are U.S. mortgage securities or ?

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 bon

Gets better, seems McDonald's got emergency aid to save the world from global collapse.

The Fed jumped in to start buying the paper, sending cash to more than a thousand companies and foreign governments, including McDonald's, Mitsubishi, Harley-Davidson, Amstel Funding Corp., GE, to the Bank or Korea. Bank of America was on the receiving end of several billion in such loans made over several days.

These were repaid, but ....assuredly it was major cheap money?

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