Report: Fed lent Wall St. $1.2T more

The Federal Reserve lent Wall Street firms a staggering $1.2 trillion dollars in a previously unrevealed bank bailout that dwarfs the size of TARP, reports Bloomberg News.

The $1.2 trillion -which Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke lent to banks and other firms to prevent the economy from collapsing - is roughly equivalent to the amount that U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million underwater mortgages, Bloomberg said.

One aspect of the bailout sure to exasperate critics of the Federal Reserve is that almost half of the Fed’s top 30 borrowers were European firms.

The Royal Bank of Scotland took $84.5 billion, the most of any foreign borrower, Swiss bank UBS got $77.2 billion, Germany’s Hypo Real Estate Holding received $28.7 billion in loans. Belgium’s biggest bank, Dexia, and France’s Societe Generale also took in loans.

The Federal Reserve claims that it has not lost money on these emergency loans, and that in fact it has netted $13 billion in interest from these programs from August 2007 through December 2009. read more

We all know the Company line: They were to big to fail.
And understanding the timeline, these loans were on Baby Bushes watch (did you hear that Tea Baggers).

Yet in still, what does it take for the folks in the loop to recognize that the middle-class is to big to fail?

Our shared fate and sustained recovery is rooted in consumer confidence and not just the elite getting larger and larger pieces of the pie.

Now to the Tea Party crowd yammering away at Obama perceived failures.

1. This is further proof that the system was broken under the GOP stewardship of our economy.

2. Not only did the GOP congress not help bailout the average American, they demonstratively obstructed any stimulus for the middle-class. The craziest thing, these folks even sabotaged there own ideas if President Obama agrees with them.

3. See how the Fed recognized that TARP was too small to effectively resolve banking issues, hence they expanding the Bank bailout? Well, the Obama stimulus for middle America was undersized and needs expanding as well. The patient will not recover until more jobs are created - the uber rich with all the tax breaks and bailout dough ain't going to do it.

4. Speaking about taxes, how - especially after this revelation - can you continue to support tax break extensions and the loop hole exemptions to the uber rich?