Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/57045 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 698
Publisher: 
Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Abstract: 
There have been a number of estimates of the total amount of funding provided by the Federal Reserve to bail out the financial system. For example, Bloomberg recently claimed that the cumulative commitment by the Fed (this includes asset purchases plus lending) was $7.77 trillion. As part of the Ford Foundation project 'A Research and Policy Dialogue Project on Improving Governance of the Government Safety Net in Financial Crisis', Nicola Matthews and James Felkerson have undertaken an examination of the data on the Fed's bailout of the financial system - the most comprehensive investigation of the raw data to date. This working paper is the first in a series that will report the results of this investigation. The extraordinary scope and magnitude of the recent financial crisis of 2007-09 required an extraordinary response by the Fed in the fulfillment of its lender-of-last-resort function. The purpose of this paper is to provide a descriptive account of the Fed's response to the recent financial crisis. It begins with a brief summary of the methodology, then outlines the unconventional facilities and programs aimed at stabilizing the existing financial structure. The paper concludes with a summary of the scope and magnitude of the Fed's crisis response. The bottom line: a Federal Reserve bailout commitment in excess of $29 trillion.
Subjects: 
global financial crisis
fed bailout
lender of last resort
term auction facility
central bank liquidity swaps
single tranche open market operation
term securities lending facility and term options program
maiden lane
primary dealer credit facility
asset-backed commercial paper money market mutual fund liquidity facility
commercial paper funding facility
term asset-backed securities loan facility
agency mortgage-backed security purchase program
AIG revolving credit facility
AIG securities borrowing facility
JEL: 
E58
E65
G01
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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