Fed reveals details of bailout funds recipients

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At the height of the crisis, the Federal Reserve provided trillions of dollars to a variety of banks and companies to stave off a financial meltdown that would have ushered in an even worse economic crisis. Many argue the program was successful. But there have been lots of skeptics as well, who succeeded in getting a provision into Dodd-Drank that requires an accounting of all this funding. The Fed has released its report, and boy is it a doozy.

The 13 programs covered--including many that we had forgetting, the TALF, the TAF, the PDCF, the MBS Purchase Progam and others--included more than 21,000 individual transactions with a total loan value of $3.3 trillion, according to Bloomberg. The programs involved have since been shut down, and most loans have been repaid.

The most striking aspect of the disclosure, so far anyway, is the diversity of companies that received the aid. Many affiliates of overseas banks benefitted, such as UBS, Deutsche Bank, the Korean Development Bank, as well as the likes of top U.S. investment and commercial banks.

The Fed notes that these actions "were taken to avoid the disorderly failure of these institutions and the potential catastrophic consequences for the U.S. financial system and economy. All extensions of credit were fully secured and are in the process of being fully repaid."

But plenty of critics remain. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who asked for the disclosures, characterized the new details as "astounding" and called for an investigation to determine whether banks borrowed at near-zero interest and then loaned money back to the government at higher rates, reports the Christian Science Monitor. He thinks top executives may have been inappropriately compensated.

"How many big banks [that] repaid Treasury Department bailouts in order to avoid limits on executive compensation received no-strings attached loans from the Federal Reserve?" Mr. Sanders asked in a statement released Wednesday. The Fed notes that no rules "about executive compensation or dividend payments were applied to borrowers using Federal Reserve facilities." Those restrictions came via the U.S. Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Still, it doesn't sit well with some.

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