The Fed Rescue Program Too Bizarre to Be True: Michael Lewis

Last week the Federal Reserve bravely released 894 PDF files containing 29,346 pages that detailed its heroic actions during the financial crisis.

These documents revealed how open-minded the Fed can be when it needs to be. Local governments in Belgium, Japanese fishing cooperatives, the Libyan government and many other unlikely parties received the Fed’s financial aid. Failing U.S. banks, such as Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, were of course handed whatever they wanted, and permitted to post as collateral pretty much anything they could get their hands on: junk bonds, defaulted debt, volatile equities.