Surprised? Well, not when you consider the number of ex-Goldman Sachs employees in the US administration. And that's over a year ago. Now add to that, the nearly 1,500 ex-US government employees lobbying for Wall Street firms.
Wondering who held the most strings?
Voila!
UPDATE: According to a blog post in early Dec 2010 by Bernard Sanders, Independent Senator from Vermont: "What have we learned so far from the disclosure of more than 21,000 transactions (by the Fed)? We have learned that the $700 billion Wall Street bailout signed into law by President George W. Bush turned out to be pocket change compared to the trillions and trillions of dollars in near-zero interest loans and other financial arrangements the Federal Reserve doled out to every major financial institution in this country. Among those are Goldman Sachs, which received nearly $600 billion; Morgan Stanley, which received nearly $2 trillion; Citigroup, which received $1.8 trillion; Bear Stearns, which received nearly $1 trillion, and Merrill Lynch, which received some $1.5 trillion in short term loans from the Fed.
We also learned that the Fed's multi-trillion bailout was not limited to Wall Street and big banks, but that some of the largest corporations in this country also received a very substantial bailout. Among those are General Electric, McDonald's, Caterpillar, Harley Davidson, Toyota and Verizon.
Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign private banks and corporations including two European megabanks - Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse - which were the largest beneficiaries of the Fed's purchase of mortgage-backed securities.
Deutsche Bank, a German lender, sold the Fed more than $290 billion worth of mortgage securities. Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, sold the Fed more than $287 billion in mortgage bonds."
Between them, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Credit Suisse employed 171 lobbyists to take care of their interests in 2009 & 2010 (see table above)... Obviously, it was money well-spent.
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