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provided a stunning $1.2 trillion to large global financial institutions

The money has been repaid

sketchy collateral

surprisingly sketchy collatera

Royal Bank of Scotland received $84.5 billion, and Dexia, a Belgian lender, borrowed $58.5 billion from the Fed at its peak

provided this much assistance to the biggest institutions for so long, and then to have done in effect nothing for the homeowner, nothing for credit card relief.”

financial regulators are captured by the companies they oversee,

espouses the principle that all men and women are equal under the law,” Mr. Kane said. “During the housing bubble and the economic meltdown that the bursting bubble brought about, the interests of domestic and foreign financial institutions were much better represented than the interests of society as a whole.”

THIS inequity must be eliminated

regulators who have a duty to protect taxpayers should require these institutions to provide them with true and comprehensive reports about their financial positions and the potential risks they involve.

The banks really feel entitled to hide their deteriorating positions until they require life support.

Mr. Todd also questioned the Fed’s decision to accept stock as collateral backing a loan to a bank. “If you make a loan in an emergency secured by equities, how is that different in substance from the Fed walking into the New York Stock Exchange and buying across the board tomorrow?”

if we do nothing to protect taxpayers from the symbiotic relationship between the industry and their federal minders, we are in for many more episodes like the one we are still digging out of.

EVALUATING bailout programs like the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the facilities extended by the Fed against “the senseless standard of doing nothing at all,” Mr. Kane testified, government officials tell taxpayers that these actions were “necessary to save us from worldwide depression and made money for the taxpayer.” Both contentions are false, he said.

“Thanks to the vastly subsidized terms these programs offered, most institutions were eventually able to repay the formal obligations they incurred.” But taxpayers were inadequately compensated for the help they provided,

Government officials rewarded imprudent institutions with stupefying amounts of free money