Econintersect: The long awaited General Accounting Office (GAO) study of the Federal Reserve which was authorized by Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is out and is 266 pages. Econintersect’s first glance observations:
The Fed passed out $16,115 billion in cummulative across its range of emergency programs. The beneficiaries:
Citigroup Inc.$ 2,513 billion
Morgan Stanley $2,041 billion
Merrill Lynch & Co. $1,949 billion
Bank of America Corporation $1,344 billion
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom) $ 868 billion
Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. – $853 billion
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. $814 billion
Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (United Kingdom) $541 billion
Deutsche Bank AG (Germany) $354 billion
UBS AG (Switzerland) $287 billion
JP Morgan Chase & Co. $391 billion
Credit Suisse Group AG (Switzerland) $262 billion
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. $183 billion
Bank of Scotland PLC (United Kingdom) $181 billion
BNP Paribas SA (France) $175 billion
Wells Fargo & Co. $159 billion
Dexia SA (Belgium) $ 159 billion
Wachovia Corporation $142 billion
Dresdner Bank AG (Germany) $135 billion
Societe Generale SA (France) $124 billion
All other borrowers $2,639 billion
Total $16,115 billion
GAO makes seven recommendations to the Federal Reserve Board to strengthen policies for managing noncompetitive vendor selections, conflicts of interest, risks related to emergency lending, and documentation of emergency program decisions. The Federal Reserve Board agreed that GAO’s recommendations would benefit its response to future crises and agreed to strongly consider how best to respond to them.
Econintersect hopes to post analysis of this audit in the near future.
source: GAO
