Wouldn't you love to walk into a bank and get an interest rate that is agreeable to you? No fuss, warm handshakes and no car-dealership-esque treatment. Does that sound like what you expect when walking into bank x,y or z...perhaps FannieMae or CountryWide for your home? Well yeah, that doesn't happen for regular people, but it does happen for the banks themselves.
From Reuters:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Banks in the United States have been quietly borrowing "massive amounts" from the U.S. Federal Reserve in recent weeks, using a new measure the Fed introduced two months ago to help ease the credit crunch, according to a report on the web site of The Financial Times.
The newspaper said the use of the Fed's Term Auction Facility (TAF), which allows banks to borrow at relatively attractive rates against a wide range of their assets, saw borrowing of nearly $50 billion of one-month funds from the Fed by mid-February.
The Financial Times said the move has sparked unease among some analysts about the stress developing in opaque corners of the U.S. banking system and the banks' growing reliance on indirect forms of government support.
O.K. well most of us are generally looking to borrow 0.00001 percent of that for a home or add another 0 to that number for a car. Still, the fact that they get to hit our government up for cash while we can't pay for a national health care system and our treasury goes deeper into debt. It isn't right that we bailout industries that have cast tough times upon themselves through greed and illegitimate (or should be illegitimate) behavior. Perhaps after January 20th of next year raping America wholesale will be considered criminal again.
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