The Federal Reserve revealed details Wednesday of more than $3 trillion in emergency aid it provided to U.S. and foreign banks during the financial crisis.
Newly released documents show that the most loan money over time went to Citigroup ($2.2 trillion), followed by Merrill Lynch ($2.1 trillion), Morgan Stanley ($2 trillion), Bank of America ($1.1 trillion), Bear Stearns ($960 billion), Goldman Sachs ($620 billion), JPMorgan Chase ($260 billion) and Wells Fargo ($150 billion). Many of the individual loans they took were worth billions and had short durations but were paid back and renewed many times.
Merrill Lynch was later acquired by Bank of America, while Bear Stearns collapsed and was sold to JPMorgan.
Among the largest foreign bank recipients were Bank of England, Swiss National Bank, Barclays and Bank of Japan.
The documents are a reminder of how crippled the financial system had become during the crisis and how much it's recovered since. Banks earned $14 billion from July through September this year.
The Fed released the data in the form of more than 21,000 transactions. The disclosures are required under the financial overhaul law. The Fed's programs were credited with helping restore the health of individual banks and stabilize the financial system.
The documents detail more than $2 trillion the Fed lent through eight programs from December 2007 to July this year to ease a credit crisis. It came at a time when credit had virtually dried up and was worsening the deepest recession since the Great Depression.
The lending programs had never been used before and are now defunct. Most of the loans have been repaid, and none are overdue, Fed officials say.
The Fed also detailed the $1.25 trillion in mortgage securities it bought from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to help drive down mortgage rates, ease credit and provide some support to the crippled housing market.
In addition, the Fed disclosed details of "swap" arrangements with foreign central banks. These occurred when the Fed traded much-in-demand dollars for foreign currencies to try to ease credit. The foreign central banks, in turn, lent the dollars to banks in their countries that needed dollar funding. The Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of Japan were involved in the exchanges.
One of the emergency lending programs the Fed created provided low-cost, short-term loans to banks. Another sought to ease credit problems in the "commercial paper" market, which many U.S. companies use to finance everything from salaries to supplies.
Another was designed to spark low-cost lending to consumers and small businesses. Investors used the Fed's loans to buy securities backed by auto loans, credit cards and other debt.
But the emergency aid that was extended to banks and Wall Street rankled many ordinary Americans who weren't getting any help in their struggles with high unemployment, rising foreclosures and sagging home values. And many expressed anger toward banks and Wall Street for lax lending and for taking risky gambles that contributed to the crisis.
Much of the information the Fed is disclosing is similar to what would be required under a court case that a group of commercial banks is appealing to the Supreme Court.
The Fed didn't take part in that appeal. What the court case could require — but the Fed isn't providing Wednesday — are the names of commercial banks that got low-cost emergency loans from the Fed's "discount window" during the crisis.
The Fed has long acted as a lender of last resort, offering commercial banks loans through its discount window when they couldn't obtain financing elsewhere. The Fed has kept secret the identities of such borrowers. It's expressed fear that naming such a bank could cause a run on it, defeating the purpose of the program.
The Fed didn't oppose releasing the information being disclosed Wednesday.
But the new financial overhaul law will require the Fed in late 2012 to provide information on any commercial banks that are drawing emergency loans from its discount window now. That doesn't include banks that drew loans from the discount window during the 2007-2009 financial crisis.