Fed Report Rakes Geithner Over AIG Bailout

Geithner, Paulson face grilling over 'backdoor bailouts' for AIG clients

(NEWSER) - Two Federal Reserve governors expressed their unease about the Fed's rejection of a plan to force big banks to return $30 billion in cash they received from AIG before its bailout in late 2008. The officials warned that the decision to let the banks, including Goldman Sachs, keep the collateral they paid AIG on credit insurance contracts might be "a gift" to the firms, according to documents obtained by the New York Times. More»

(NEWSER) - These days, $85 billion just doesn't go as far as it used to. The Federal Reserve said today it will provide AIG with an additional $37.8 billion to help the beleaguered insurance giant out of its liquidity mess, Bloomberg reports. The money is on top of the massive loan it got last month. The New York Fed will provide the additional cash to AIG's life insurance subsidiaries in exchange for investment-grade, fixed-income securities. More»

Financial sell-off follows Fed's move, sends markets plummeting

(NEWSER) - News of the Bear Stearns bailout triggered a sell-off today as investors were reminded that the true depth and breadth of current credit problems remains uncertain, the Wall Street Journal reports. Bear Stearns stock closed at 30, down a breathtaking 47.4% on the day. The Dow fell 194.65 to 11,951.09, the Nasdaq 51.12 to 2,212.49, and the S&P 500 27.34 to 1,288.14. More»

Banks took in billions of dollars, even as they claimed to be healthy

(NEWSER) - For more than two years, the Fed and the banks it bailed out during the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis have kept many of the details of the massive, multi-trillion-dollar bailout a secret. But, thanks to Freedom of Information Act requests, 29,000 pages of bailout details are pouring out of the Fed at last, and those details are explained in an extended and damning report by Bloomberg Markets magazine. Among the biggest revelations:

• $7.77 trillion: the total amount doled out in aid by the Fed to all the banks, as of March 2009, which Bloomberg notes surpasses 50% of the value of "everything produced in the US that year." In comparison, the $700 billion TARP "at least had some strings attached," says one House Democrat. "With the Fed programs, there was nothing."

Banks sought to block details from media

(NEWSER) - The Federal Reserve will release information on several emergency loans it made to prominent banks when the financial crisis struck in 2008, CNNMoney reports. Bloomberg News initially filed a lawsuit against the Fed in an attempt to gain details on the loans; the Fed declined the request due to "trade secrets" that might be revealed in the fine print. While the banks and Fed won the initial lawsuit, an appellate court ruled that the media should get the information. More»