Last Call

The One Percenters complain that we can't possibly spend any more money to help Americans in need right now, that we have to cut, cut, cut social programs and aid to the 99% as the Great Recession and the Housing Depression rolls on.

Turns out the banksters got more money than anyone possibly imagined, including me.  The Fed, over three years, made $7.7 trillion in emergency no-interest or low-interest loans to banks, including $1.2 trillion on one day, in order to save the financial system.

The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.

The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.

A fresh narrative of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 emerges from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions. While Fed officials say that almost all of the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger. 

And the banks made $13 billion in profit off these loans.   Topping the list: Citigroup made $1.8 billion off those loans, Bank of America $1.5 billion, and Royal Bank of Scotland made $1.2 billion off of the America taxpayer.  But that's not socialism, or course.

So yeah.  When the one percent and the companies they work for and own need money, they get $7.7 trillion in loans to keep the status quo going.  Meanwhile, you as a peon?  You should be made to suffer.  It builds character.

Assholes.