Fed lent banks nearly $8 trillion during crisis, report show

Now iffen Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich hadn't authorized this it wouldn't have happened.

While the nation's largest banks were publicly reassuring nervous investors of their stability during the height of the financial crisis, they were also quietly approaching the Federal Reserve, hat in hand. The total price tag: $7.77 trillion, many times the amount of the better-known TARP bailout.

The magnitude of the government's assistance to struggling banks allowed them to grow even bigger and continue paying executives billions in compensation, a report in Bloomberg Markets January issue said Monday.

A win in court against a group representing the banks and a FOIA request filed by Bloomberg LP revealed the extent of the central bank's largesse — as well as the $13 billion in profits banks earned from those bailouts. The so called "big six" — JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — accounted for $4.8 billion of that total — nearly a quarter of their net income during that time.

http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/28/9067808-fed-lent-banks-nearly-8-trillion-during-crisis-report-shows

We print money out of thin air (eroding the value of our dollar) to save the EU, which has a bigger economy than the US to buy them a little time? What asshats.