Courtesy of Pam Martens
Senator Pat Toomey
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
On November 27, Wall Street On Parade reported that U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin had failed to turn over to the Federal Reserve 75 percent of the $454 billion that Congress had earmarked in the CARES Act for the Fed’s emergency lending programs. We wrote at the time:
“…for months now, the Federal Reserve’s weekly financial statements known as the H.4.1 have indicated that all the Fed received from Treasury for its emergency lending facilities was $114 billion, leaving $340 billion unaccounted for.”
We also took the time to send an email to the Federal Reserve’s press office to confirm that the Fed had received only the $114 billion from the Treasury for its emergency lending programs. They directed us to Fed public documents confirming this.
Now the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a century old nonpartisan agency that provides legal analysis to Congress, has confirmed what Wall Street On Parade reported more than three weeks ago. In a December 17 letter to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, the CRS wrote the following:
“Section 4003(b)(4) of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act authorizes the Treasury Secretary to invest up to $454 billion in emergency-lending programs established by the Federal Reserve (the Fed). To date, the Treasury Secretary has committed $195 billion to such programs, and appears to have transferred $114 billion of that amount as of December 9, 2020.”
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