WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The Federal Reserve is set to release a new trove of documents detailing which banks came to it hat-in-hand during and in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
Fed officials have warned that naming the borrowers from its traditional discount window--which typically makes overnight loans to banks that are short of funds--could make firms more vulnerable in a crisis by making them reluctant to seek help when needed.
The agency resisted making the disclosures until federal courts demanded it, scheduling the document release only after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene.
The Fed will on Thursday release about 25,000 emergency-lending documents spanning a period from Aug. 7, 2007 until March 1, 2010. The data includes details for the peak month of October 2008, a month after Lehman Brothers (LEHMQ) filed for bankruptcy during the depth of the crisis, when discount-window loans soared to $111 billion.
The disclosure, brought about by suits from the media, marks the government's latest step in providing more information about the Fed's rescue efforts during the crisis. In December, the central bank was forced by the Dodd-Frank financial law to lift the veil of secrecy on nearly all the $3.3 trillion worth of credit it funneled to different parts of the economy and the financial system during the crisis.
Just one category was excluded: the discount window, the oldest lending tool in the central bank's arsenal. When a bank can't borrow from other banks, which is what happened in the crisis, it can borrow from the Fed as a last resort at a slightly higher discount rate.
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