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Federal Reserve's Once-Secret Loan Crisis Data Compiled by Bloomberg Released to Public

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-23/fed-s-once-secret-data-compiled-by-bloomberg-released-to-public.html

-Dec 23, 2011-

Bloomberg News today released spreadsheets showing daily borrowing totals for 407 banks and companies that tapped Federal Reserve emergency programs during the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis. It’s the first time such data have been publicly available in this form......

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Federal Reserve Secretly Bailing Out Europe

(((CNBC-Video))) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_u8tFqOIarc

-Dec 28th, 2011 | 11:50 AM ET-

A former Federal Reserve official says in the Wall Street Journal that the Federal Reserve is covertly bailing out Europe. Insight with Gerald O'Driscoll, Cato Institute senior fellow, who says the Fed operated a "temporary U.S. dollar liquidity swap arrangement."

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The Federal Reserve's Covert Bailout of Europe

When is a loan between central banks not a loan? When it is a dollars-for-euros currency swap.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204464404577118682763082876.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

-DECEMBER 28, 2011-

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Bloomberg Fires Back At Bernanke's Blustering Rebutall

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/bloomberg-fires-back-bernankes-blustering-rebutall

-12/06/2011-

(TylerDurden) It appears 'It Is On' as Bloomberg offers its well-reasoned and eloquent response to Mr. Bernanke's 'egregious errors' note to Congress. Without naming names, Bernanke makes a number of points regarding the reporting of the secret bailout terms and profiteering, which we discussed here, and now Bloomberg comes 'Over-The-Top' Stallone-style with a much more fine-toothed refutation of Bernanke's refutation of their reporting. "Bloomberg stands by its reporting" and offers a point-by-point take-down of the Fed-head's perspectives....

(((Here is Bernanke's letter to Congress))) http://www.scribd.com/doc/74953881/Bernanke-12-6-11-House-Letter

...and Bloomberg's excellent point-by-point response can be found here, but for a taster, here is Bloomberg's slap in the face of Bernanke's claim that all program details were public:

"Bloomberg’s Nov. 28 story about Fed lending reported that the central bank published regular reports on the scope of borrowings from the discount window and other emergency or temporary programs. The loans were described as “secret” because the amounts, names of borrowers, dates and, often, interest rates weren’t disclosed. The stories reported that the Fed’s rationale for keeping the loans secret was to prevent bank runs."

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Bloomberg News Responds to Bernanke Criticism

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-06/bloomberg-news-responds-to-bernanke-criticism.html

-December 6, 2011-

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Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html

By Bob Ivry, Bradley Keoun and Phil Kuntz - Nov 27, 2011

$7.77 Trillion

....The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he “wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.....

(((Continue Reading Here))) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html

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Bernanke Says That Any Criticism Of The Federal Reserve Is Based On “Misconceptions”

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/bernanke-says-any-criticism-federal-reserve-based-%E2%80%9Cmisconceptions%E2%80%9D

-11/11/2011-

Nice summary of facts pertaining Federal Reserve's ongoing failures. Michael didn't mention the Fed's unauthorized "mandate" to keep stock prices up. But I guess Bernanke thinks he's done a good job with that. Although why the Fed, or even the government, should be involved with that "free market" manifestation of price discovery is beyond me. (I suppose one could argue that higher stock prices helps saves jobs??) http://ilene.typepad.com/ourfavorites/

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Bernanke Says That Any Criticism Of The Federal Reserve Is Based On “Misconceptions”

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/bernanke-says-that-any-criticism-of-the-federal-reserve-is-based-on-misconceptions

Courtesy of Michael Snyder of Economy Collapse -Nov/11/2011-

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is taking his show on the road in at attempt to help Americans feel better about the Federal Reserve. During a visit to the Fort Bliss headquarters of the Army’s 1st Armored Division this week, Bernanke held a town hall meeting during which he took questions from some of the soldiers. Bernanke tried to sound as compassionate as possible as he assured the soldiers that the Federal Reserve is looking out for the American people and is doing everything that it can to help create jobs.

At one point, Bernanke even made the following statement: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/10/us-usa-fed-bernanke-idUSTRE7A96GR20111110 "...For a lot of people, I know, it doesn't feel like the recession ever ended." That probably helped a lot of people feel better. A few probably even had a good cry. But what Bernanke did not explain to the troops is that the Federal Reserve is very much responsible for the fact that unemployment is rampant, for the fact that the U.S. dollar is rapidly being devalued and for the fact that we have accumulated the largest national debt in the history of the world.

Ben Bernanke keeps insisting that the Federal Reserve has two main jobs (fighting inflation and keeping unemployment low) and that it is working incredibly hard to accomplish that dual mandate. During his visit with the soldiers... http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/10/us-usa-fed-bernanke-idUSTRE7A96GR20111110 ...he told them that the Fed is very determined to create more jobs for the American people....

"We at the Federal Reserve have been focusing intently on supporting job creation."

Well, if we are to judge the Federal Reserve by how well it has accomplished its "dual mandate", then the Federal Reserve has been an abysmal failure.

Since the Federal Reserve was created, the U.S. dollar has lost well over 95 percent of its value to inflation.

((( MD: And according to Ben Bernanke, inflation is a -TAX- ))) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4yBrxmEOkY

Is that something Bernanke should be proud of? Of course not. Okay, so the Fed has failed when it comes to keeping inflation under control.

What about jobs? Well, the first decade of this century was the worst decade for job creation that the United States has seen since the Great Depression.

The sad truth is that a total of zero jobs were created last decade. The following is a quote from a recent article in Washington Monthly... http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1003.lynn-longman.html

"If any single number captures the state of the American economy over the last decade, it is zero. That was the net gain in jobs between 1999 and 2009—nada, nil, zip. By painful contrast, from the 1940s through the 1990s, recessions came and went, but no decade ended without at least a 20 percent increase in the number of jobs."

So what kind of a grade should we give the Federal Reserve for the job that it has done? How about a big fat F?

The Federal Reserve has been a failure of epic proportions. It greatly contributed to the Great Depression (even Bernanke admits this), it created the conditions for the financial bubbles that greatly contributed to the financial crisis of 2008, and it has brought us to the verge of yet another gigantic financial crisis.

But Ben Bernanke believes that all of us that are criticizing the Fed are just ignorant. He thinks that we just don't understand the Fed properly. During a recent question and answer session, Bernanke stated the following http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/02/news/economy.../bernanke_occupy_wall_street/index.htm

Ben Bernanke: "I think that the concerns about the Fed are based on misconceptions"

(((Continue Reading the Rest of this article Here))) http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/bernanke-says-any-criticism-federal-reserve-based-%E2%80%9Cmisconceptions%E2%80%9D