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Did NY Fed Cost Taxpayers Billions?

There are two sides to every story, and sometimes three, four or five. An audit by the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program claims that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York allowed banks to get 100% of the value of complicated financial instruments that they had insured with AIG (NYSE:AIG). The transactions involved over $60 billion. The full report was issued today.

The inspector general Neil M. Barofsky claims that the Fed “refused to use its considerable leverage” to force major banks to make concessions on the money they were owed as part of their relationships with AIG. Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) was among the firms that benefited from the Fed’s action while Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS) actually offered to take less than 100 cents on a dollar for its insurance claims and was turned down.

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