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Jim_Baur
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forbes.com/sites/steveschaefer/2011/12/06/bernanke-there-was-no-secret-bank-bailout-and-it-was-only-1-5-trillion/
This is another article, and the number is much lower than the earlier article.
…In response to estimates that peg the Fed’s emergency lending to banks anywhere from $7.7 trillion to $16 trillion or $24 trillion. “All of these numbers are wildly inaccurate,” he says, putting the total credit outstanding at no more than $1.5 trillion at its peak.
Even that figure is misleading when held up as a handout for the financial sector, according to Bernanke, who notes that “nearly all of the emergency assistance has been fully repaid or is on track to be fully repaid,” as verified by the Federal Reserve Board’s independent auditor and the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
**Bernanke, who goes on to argue that the emergency loans generated $20 billion in interest income for the Treasury Department and that the Fed has returned $125 billion to taxpayers from operations that include the facilities, also stresses that the lending supported businesses with few ties to Wall Street. Among them were the aforementioned McDonald’s and Caterpillar, as well as Harley-Davidson and National Rural Utilities, which tapped the central bank’s commercial paper funding facility (CPFF) when liqudity in that key short-term market dried up.
Bernanke also takes issue with painting the U.S. financial industry as insolvent and at risk of utter collapse when the Fed turned on its liquidity hose. Instead, he describes “otherwise solvent banks and other financial institutions…forced to sell assets at fire-sale prices” due to the surrounding financial panic**.
This is another article, and the number is much lower than the earlier article.
…In response to estimates that peg the Fed’s emergency lending to banks anywhere from $7.7 trillion to $16 trillion or $24 trillion. “All of these numbers are wildly inaccurate,” he says, putting the total credit outstanding at no more than $1.5 trillion at its peak.
Even that figure is misleading when held up as a handout for the financial sector, according to Bernanke, who notes that “nearly all of the emergency assistance has been fully repaid or is on track to be fully repaid,” as verified by the Federal Reserve Board’s independent auditor and the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
**Bernanke, who goes on to argue that the emergency loans generated $20 billion in interest income for the Treasury Department and that the Fed has returned $125 billion to taxpayers from operations that include the facilities, also stresses that the lending supported businesses with few ties to Wall Street. Among them were the aforementioned McDonald’s and Caterpillar, as well as Harley-Davidson and National Rural Utilities, which tapped the central bank’s commercial paper funding facility (CPFF) when liqudity in that key short-term market dried up.
Bernanke also takes issue with painting the U.S. financial industry as insolvent and at risk of utter collapse when the Fed turned on its liquidity hose. Instead, he describes “otherwise solvent banks and other financial institutions…forced to sell assets at fire-sale prices” due to the surrounding financial panic**.
