Worse Than We Thought

I knew the bailout of big banks was a stupid thing to do.  But now we find out that the Fed wasn't just bailing out U.S. banks.  From the December 1, 2010 Financial Times:

Foreign banks were among the biggest beneficiaries of the $3,300bn in emergency credit provided by the Federal Reserve during the crisis, according to new data on the extraordinary efforts of the US authorities to save the global financial system.

The rest of the article details how much a number of foreign banks borrowed from the Fed--including $232 billion that Barclays borrowed.