Sanders Discusses Fed Disclosure on CNN

The Fed Jaw Dropper - As financial markets imploded in 2008, the Federal Reserve opened its vault much wider than previously disclosed reaching far beyond Wall Street to manufacturers and foreign banks. "After years of stonewalling, the American people are finally learning the jaw-dropping details of the Fed's multitrillion-dollar bailouts," said Sen. Bernard Sanders, whose provision in a law required the disclosures, according to The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Burlington Free Press, Bloomberg and McClatchy newspapers.
Twin Bailouts -  In the LA Times and Chicago Tribune, Sanders said the Fed's "backdoor bailout" dwarfed the $700-billion Treasury Department program to bail out banks, automakers and the giant insurer American International Group Inc. AFP said he called that program "pocket change" by comparison. "How many big banks [that] repaid Treasury Department bailouts in order to avoid limits on executive compensation received no-strings attached loans from the Federal Reserve?" he asked in The Christian Science Monitor.
Credit Card Scam - Sen. Sanders told CNN's Eliot Spitzer that the new details on the Fed's actions during the financial crisis reveal poor judgment.
"You got credit card companies that were substantially helped by the bailout saying, ‘oh thank you very much for helping us out, now we're gonna charge you 25 or 30 percent interest rates,'" Sanders told "Parker Spitzer." Even if the Fed was right to make the loans to keep the economy from toppling into a depression, Sanders told CNN it should have made stronger demands that the banks help American consumers and small businesses.