Why the Federal Reserve's 'loan' for the Bear Stearns deal looks like an investment—and faces serious scrutiny

Business Week reports:

The Federal Reserve has stretched its mandate up, down, and sideways to prevent a financial market deluge. Now it appears to be stretching the English language a bit as well. What the Fed is calling a $29 billion "loan" to help finance JPMorgan Chase's (JPM) purchase of Bear Stearns (BSC) looks much more like a $29 billion investment in securities owned by Bear. Although the Fed insists that it isn't technically buying any assets, in practical terms it's doing exactly that. All this adds up to a big and unacknowledged step up in the central bank's financial intervention with Wall Street investment banks.

How many Americans know that the Fed is a private bank with stock?