Loaned, actually. And half of that was in overnight loans, that if renewed were recounted each day. Actual report from the GAO (which I got curious about and which is a website I'm glad to have, actually!) is at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf
"Table 8 aggregates total dollar transaction amounts by adding the total dollar amount of all loans but does not adjust these amounts to reflect differences across programs in the term over which loans were outstanding. For example, an overnight PDCF loan of $10 billion that was renewed daily at the same level for 30 business days would result in an aggregate amount borrowed of $300 billion although the institution, in effect, borrowed only $10 billion over 30 days. In contrast, a TAF loan of $10 billion extended over a 1-month period would appear as $10 billion. As a result, the total transaction amounts shown in table 8 for PDCF are not directly comparable to the total transaction amounts shown for TAF and other programs that made loans for periods longer than overnight."
Mr. Grayson is spinning things nicely, but he either didn't read or didn't understand the report. If I give a two-week loan to a friend of $500 and it is paid off on time, and I proceed to do the same thing every two weeks all year, I'm not out $13,000 - I used the same $500 over and over again and still have it after the last loan is finally paid off.
On page 137, there's a graph that shows the total outstanding loans over time, and it appears to have peaked just a little over 1 trillion (NOT a small number, to be sure!) in late 2008. By January of this year it appears (the graph is not fine-tuned enough for me to be sure) to be under 50 billion, total. Which is still a lot of money to you and me, but it's not 16 trillion.
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Date: 2011-10-11 01:41 pm (UTC)"Table 8 aggregates total dollar transaction amounts by adding the total dollar amount of all loans but does not adjust these amounts to reflect differences across programs in the term over which loans were outstanding. For example, an overnight PDCF loan of $10 billion that was renewed daily at the same level for 30 business days would result in an aggregate amount borrowed of $300 billion although the institution, in effect, borrowed only $10 billion over 30 days. In contrast, a TAF loan of $10 billion extended over a 1-month period would appear as $10 billion. As a result, the total transaction amounts shown in table 8 for PDCF are not directly comparable to the total transaction amounts shown for TAF and other programs that made loans for periods longer than overnight."
Mr. Grayson is spinning things nicely, but he either didn't read or didn't understand the report. If I give a two-week loan to a friend of $500 and it is paid off on time, and I proceed to do the same thing every two weeks all year, I'm not out $13,000 - I used the same $500 over and over again and still have it after the last loan is finally paid off.
On page 137, there's a graph that shows the total outstanding loans over time, and it appears to have peaked just a little over 1 trillion (NOT a small number, to be sure!) in late 2008. By January of this year it appears (the graph is not fine-tuned enough for me to be sure) to be under 50 billion, total. Which is still a lot of money to you and me, but it's not 16 trillion.