US Debt passed 20 trillion., page-5

ONE-PAGER NO. 23 | December 2011
$29,000,000,000,000: A Detailed Look at the Fed’s Bailout of the Financial System


The extraordinary scope and magnitude of the financial crisis of 2007–09 induced an extraordinary response by the Federal Reserve in the fulfillment of its lender-of-last-resort function. Estimates of the total amount of bailoutfunding provided by the Fed have ranged from its own lowball claim of $1.2 trillion to Bloomberg’s estimate of $7.7 trillion (just for the biggest banks) to the GAO tally of $16 trillion. But new research conducted as part of a Ford Foundation project directed by Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray finds that the Fed’s commitments—in the form of loans and asset purchases to prop up the global financial system—far exceeded even the highest estimates.


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One-Pager No. 23
Associated Program:
Monetary Policy and Financial Structure
Author(s):

1. Randall Wray

Related Topic(s):
Bailouts Federal Reserve Global financial crisis Lender of last resort (LOLR) Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF)