Fed Let Brokers Turn Junk to Cash At Height of Financial Crisis Huff Post 4-01-11
The Fed released thousands of pages of secret loan documents under court order, almost three years after Bloomberg LP first requested details of the central bank’s unprecedented support to banks during the financial crisis.
The records -- 894 files in PDF form with 29,346 pages -- reveal for the first time the names of financial institutions that borrowed directly from the central bank through the so- called discount window. The Fed provided the documents after the U.S. Supreme Court this month rejected a banking industry group’s attempt to shield them from public view. Bloomberg News is posting the raw documents here for subscribers to the Bloomberg Professional Service as well as online at http://www.bloomberg.com/ Accessing them will take several minutes.
Federal Reserve Lent to Gaddafi-Owned Bank Huff Post
At a time when credit markets shunned even the most worthy borrowers, foreign banks, including one partly-owned by Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, fled to the Federal Reserve and borrowed at rock-bottom interest rates, Fed documents released Thursday show.
During the height of the financial crisis in the fall of 2008, as investors and firms hoarded cash, the Fed reduced its rates to kickstart lending in the broader economy. Arab Banking Corp., a $28 billion lender now 59 percent-owned by Libya's central bank, borrowed at least $3.2 billion during this time. The Fed charged it an interest rate ranging from 2.25 percent to as low as 1.25 percent on those borrowings, regular Fed data show.
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