Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Chart of the Week: The Foreign Banks Bailed by US Fed

This chart from Zerohedge.com shows the thirty five foreign banks that received direct emergency short term loans from the US Fed that amounted to $350 billion in US taxpayer money. The three largest recipients were UBS (Swiss), Dexia SA (Belgium), and BNP Paribus (French). This is just part of the incredibly huge iceberg of $12.3 trillion in emergency loans that the Fed made to shore up the crumbling global banking cartel during the financial crisis of 2007. All of the near zero interest loans were made with US taxpayer money, but without oversight or approval by Congress and in many cases without security or with security that was essentially worthless. And now the American people will have to pay for this private banking bonanza by working longer, for lower wages, and paying higher taxes and health care costs while the plutocracy passes on its ill-gotten wealth to future generations at low tax rates. Such a deal!