Remember when money market funds “broke the buck” when Lehman collapsed? I do. Turns out taxpayer money was used to bail out 99% of banks and mutual funds providing MMF, to the tune of $2.4 trillion. This information was finally released, 4 years later. Unlike the Federal Reserve, the Treasury department, which provided the bailout, IS accountable to taxpayers, yet it was kept completely secret. How would you have responded knowing Treasury was once again bailing out banks and hedge funds for $2.4 trillion? We’ll never know, because they withheld this information from the public, the public to whom they are supposed to be accountable. One can only imagine what type of behavior and bailouts we will never find out about. People should be outraged! No? Go back to sleep then.
Treasury’s Secretive $2.4 Trillion Fund Guarantee
John Carney | CNBC
Details about a secretive government program to bail out money-market mutual funds are finally coming to light.
Acting without any explicit Congressional authority, the U.S. Treasury guaranteed in excess of $2.4 trillion of money market funds after the giant Reserve Primary Fund “broke the buck” following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. The program, which ended on Sept. 18, 2009, seems to have successfully prevented a panicked run by money-market fund investors.
But until now the Treasury has kept the identities of the funds that received government backing and the amounts guaranteed secret. It was not clear how many funds obtained backing or for how much taxpayers were on the hook during the program’s duration.
Linus Wilson, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, recently obtained data about the program from the Treasury, through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The data from the Treasury show that taxpayers were backing in excess of $2.4 trillion through the mutual fund program. Hundreds of funds participated in the program, amounting to almost
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Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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