70% Of Fed Loans To Foreign Banks!

I bank with Dexia.

Imagine the FED not stepping in.

I would have lost everything.

 

Please accept my sincere condolences, debaser ...

 

and now we have this:

"Fed’s Biggest Foreign-Bank Bailout Saved U.S. Muni Bonds
By Bob Ivry - Apr 5, 2011 9:01 PM PT

Fed’s Biggest Foreign-Bank Bailout Kept Muni Bonds on Track

The Dexia SA headquarters are seen in Brussels. Photographer: Jock Fistick/Bloomberg
Fed’s Biggest Foreign-Bank Bailout Kept Muni Bonds on Track

The Dexia SA logo sits on display at the company headquarters in Brussels. Photographer: Jock Fistick/Bloomberg

A European bank that received the most Federal Reserve discount window help during the financial crisis also took $381 billion in aid from its home countries and owned subsidiaries implicated in bid-rigging that prosecutors say defrauded U.S. taxpayers.

Details of Fed lending released last week show that Dexia SA (DEXB), based in Brussels and Paris, borrowed as much as $37 billion, with an average daily loan amount of $12.3 billion in the 18 months after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed in September 2008. The House subcommittee that oversees the Fed plans hearings on the central bank’s discount window lending to offshore financial institutions next month.

By lending to Dexia, the Fed kept money flowing into local government projects throughout the U.S. as well as the money market funds that invested in them. Dexia guaranteed bonds issued by entities as varied as the Texas State Veterans Land Board in Austin and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

“If Dexia went bankrupt, it could have been a catastrophe for municipal finance and money funds,” said Matt Fabian, a Concord, Massachusetts-based senior analyst and managing director at Municipal Markets Advisors, an independent research company. “The market has extensive exposure to foreign banks.” "

continued here http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...lout-kept-u-s-municipal-finance-on-track.html

 

"By law, most U.S. branches of foreign banks have access to the discount window, said David Skidmore, a spokesman for the American central bank. “They are important providers of credit to U.S. businesses and households, and discount window lending during the financial crisis helped support their continued lending in the United States,” he said. "

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...lout-kept-u-s-municipal-finance-on-track.html

 

"Over most of the last decade, thousands of cities, counties, hospitals and universities issued long-term floating- rate bonds and paired them with interest-rate swaps to try to protect against higher borrowing costs. The strategy, which relied on banks such as Dexia to guarantee a market for the variable-rate notes, collapsed when investment firms and bond insurers lost their top-credit ratings. "
..."Redemptions sapped Dexia so much that the bank was “two days from bankruptcy,” Pommee said, citing the French ministry for the economy. "

 

This is not true

80% of the USD is used in overseas

 

Why did the Fed not lend billions to Lehman if they were happy to lend to foreign banks?

What is the difference?

 

Lehman didn't have the collateral...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyOYm5b1NRA

It appears that the FED bailed out speculators in carry trades in exchange for profit and for keeping the dollar value low. If these speculators had to go to fx market to cover carry trades the dollar would be 0.5 to the euro at this point and the powerful lobby of multinationals in the US who live of a low dollar would not allow that.

 

If this clip is anything to go by, the people of Florida did everyone a favor by voting Alan Grayson out of office. The guy's clearly an idiot who just doesn't get it. I admire Bernanke's restraint. I would have laughed in Congressman Grayson's face and told him to go read some basic textbooks or smth.