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Here's a development we have been waiting for. After nearly three years of litigation that ended up in the Supreme Court, the Federal Reserve has thrown open a set of books that it never has before in its 97-year history.
Under court order, the Fed has revealed who borrowed from its "discount window" during the Panic of 2008. The discount window is where a bank goes to avert a liquidity squeeze; it doesn't reflect well on a bank's reputation.
Thus, the Fed and the banking industry resisted mightily when Bloomberg News and Fox Business asked for it. The Clearing House Association, a consortium of all the major banks, said disclosing this information could cause bank runs, a worldwide depression, maybe even an asteroid strike.
The media companies pressed their case all the way to the Supreme Court, which turned away the banks last month. There were no bank runs or asteroid strikes yesterday upon the data's release, although the KBW index of banking stocks did fall a modest 0.4%.
Goldman Sachs has shown up at the discount window at least five times since September 2008 — three times in the midst of the panic, once in 2009 and once in early 2010. The biggest loan was $50 million on Sept. 23, 2008.
That was two days after both Goldman and Morgan Stanley — the only survivors among the "Big Five" investment banks that stood before the panic — acquired the status of "bank holding companies." That was a step they took for the express purpose of getting access to the discount window.
But it turns out foreign banks were the biggest borrowers by far as the crisis reached a crescendo. During the week in October 2008 when borrowing reached its peak, foreign banks accounted for 70% of the $110.7 billion borrowed.
The French-Belgian bank Dexia was the biggest borrower at $33.5 billion. Four of the top five borrowers were foreign, in fact. The fifth was Wachovia, which borrowed $29 billion, to no effect, since the Fed and Treasury had to arrange a shotgun marriage with Wells Fargo.
Arab Banking Corp., a lender part-owned by THE LIBYAN central bank, borrowed $35 billion during an 18-month period following the Panic of 2008.
"The American people are going to be outraged when they understand what has been going on," says Rep. Ron Paul, chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the Fed. "What in the world are we doing thinking we can pass out tens of billions of dollars to banks that are overseas?"
Reporters and Fed watchers have only begun to digest the 894 pdf files of data the Fed released yesterday. It will be the focus of the next hearing by Congressman Ron Paul's subcommittee. We'll keep you up on their findings...
The Fed Fudges the Figures!
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