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29 Aug, 2011

Wall Street’s Not-So-Little Secret – Truthdig

In 2008, the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms took $829 billion in emergency loans from the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Who got what had been a secret, but thanks to months of litigation, an act of Congress and the work of numerous reporters, we now know.

Morgan Stanley, the largest borrower, received as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion. Even foreign companies borrowed large. Almost half of the Fed’s top 30 borrowers were European firms. The Edinburgh-based Royal Bank of Scotland took $84.5 billion—more than any other non-U.S. lender. Germany’s Hypo Real Estate Holding AG took $28.7 billion, which Bloomberg calculated as about $21 million for each of its 1,366 employees.

via Wall Street’s Not-So-Little Secret – Truthdig.