We can argue all day about the bailout of the big banks during the financial crisis. Some will argue the government had to bail them or the entire financial system would have seized. Others will claim that more banks should have been allowed to fail, that using public funds in a bailout was simply not right. I think we can all agree that the money used to bail out banks amounted to easy profits via interest rate spreads, not via additional lending that would've helped the economy. That is the point of a new research commissioned by Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The Congressional Research Service reports that in early 2009, JPMorgan Chase had an average of $29.2 billion in outstanding Fed loans with a 0.3 percent interest rate and held $34.6 billion in U.S. government securities, with an average yield of 2.1 percent.

In late 2008, Citigroup received $15.8 billion in Fed loans through the Fed's Primary Dealer Credit Facility with a 1.2 percent interest rate; $11.6 billion in Term Auction Facility loans with a 1.1 percent interest rate; and $4.9 billion in Commercial Paper Funding Facility loans with a 2.7 percent interest rate. It simultaneously held $24 billion in U.S. government securities with an average yield of 3.1 percent.

Bank of America held more than $11 billion in government securities with $47.1 billion in Fed loans in the middle of 2009, notes the Congressional Research Service .

Sanders calls this "direct corporate welfare," according to MarketWatch. He blames the Fed for not placing restrictions and obligations on the loans.

For more:
- here's the article

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