Immelt got gelt, GE raked in $16 billion from Federal Reserve

• Monies received from Dec. 1, 2007, through July 21, 2010.

12/1/10, "Fed names recipients of $3.3 trillion in crisis aid," Bloomberg, Torres and Lanman

"The data detail the breadth of central bank support that reached beyond banks to companies

• such as General Electric Co., which accessed a Fed program 12 times for a total of $16 billion

in commercial paper. Lawmakers demanded disclosure,

• over the Fed’s initial objections,

as U.S. central bankers pushed beyond their traditional role of backstopping banks. The Fed bought short-term IOUs from corporations, risky assets from Bear Stearns and

• more than $1 trillion in U.S. housing debt. ...

At Goldman Sachs Group Inc....borrowing from the Primary Dealer Credit Facility peaked at $24 billion in October 2008....

Congress excluded one Fed lending program from disclosure, the discount window, which is the subject of a 2008 lawsuit filed by Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News, against the central bank. A group of banks is appealing to the Supreme Court over lower-court decisions ordering the Fed to identify loan recipients.

• The program peaked at $110.7 billion in October 2008. ...

“We see this not as the end of a process but really a significant step forward in opening

• the veil of secrecy that exists in one of the most powerful agencies in government,” Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont Independent
  

who wrote the provision on Fed disclosure, said to reporters Nov. 17.

Request Rebuffed

Sanders said he was motivated to use legislation to force the Fed to reveal borrowers after Bernanke rebuffed his request to identify the firms.

• “Given the size of these commitments, it is incomprehensible that the American people have not received specific details about them,” Sanders said in a letter to Bernanke on Feb. 4, 2009.

“The Federal Reserve does not release specific information regarding the borrowings of individual institutions from our lending facilities,” Bernanke said in a reply to Sanders. “The approach is completely consistent with the long-standing practice of central banks.”

A year after his 2009 correspondence with Sanders, Bernanke said in House Financial Services Committee testimony the Fed would agree to reveal the names of borrowers of emergency facilities with a “sufficiently long” lag.

• Once again, he said that the confidentiality of the discount window “must be maintained.”

Today’s information relates to aid from Dec. 1, 2007, through July 21, 2010, when President Barack Obama signed Dodd- Frank into law. The act also requires the Fed,

• after a two-year delay, to identify firms that, following the law’s passage,
  

borrow through its discount window and participate in its purchases or sales of assets such as mortgage-backed securities and Treasuries."

ADDENDUM: Harley-Davidson got Fed cash too.

• Harley will be building bikes in India.
• Harley calls for concessions from US workers in Kansas City.