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it'll be easier to stab you all in the back if you close ranks in front of me, thanks...,
2011-07-25 00:59:36
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bush's third term...,
2011-07-28 15:07:03
The "$16 Trillion Dollar Secret Slush Fund":
All these news items and panicked blogs about the Fed loaning out a super-secret $16 trillion during the financial crisis are based on Table 8 of the GAO audit, page 131, which adds up the Fed's short term emergency lending windows into a vaguely meaningless number:
Table 8 aggregates total dollar transaction amounts by adding the total dollar amount of all loans but does not adjust these amounts to reflect differences across programs in the term over which loans were outstanding. For example, an overnight PDCF loan of $10 billion that was renewed daily at the same level for 30
business days would result in an aggregate amount borrowed of $300 billion although the institution, in effect, borrowed only $10 billion over 30 days. In contrast, a TAF loan of $10 billion extended over a 1-month period would appear as $10 billion.
Business Insider is out to lunch and thinks that if I borrow $1 from you every morning and pay back $1 every night for a week that you've added $7 to the monetary base. Using this number makes the actual amount of welfare the Fed and Treasury dished out to Wall Street sound like a pittance, and they can turn around and talk about how they've paid it all back minus a rounding error.
:: posted by buermann @ 2011-07-25 14:57:22 CST |
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