Fed Unveils Discount-Window Loans

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Right before it failed in 2008, Washington Mutual was a heavy Fed borrower at the discount window, the data show. The first time WaMu appears to have tapped the window that September was Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008, a week before it collapsed, taking $2 billion to carry it through the weekend. The Monday after, when that first loan was due, it turned to taking $2 billion overnight each night. It even took $2 billion on Thursday. Sept. 25, as J.P. Morgan took it over late that day in the biggest bank failure in history.

The data also showed that foreign banks, especially from Europe, were heavy borrowers at the Fed's discount window. Austria's Erste Group went to the discount window twice the day Lehman went under, borrowing $2 billion each time.

When the lending program peaked on Oct. 29, 2008, it was European banks Dexia and Depfa which took the biggest loans from the Fed discount window.

The Fed release contains a huge amount of documents that weren't released in an organized format like in the December disclosure.

No wonder why the Fed was "shy" about releasing this information.