While Fed officials trot out the highly misleading assertion that almost all of the government loans were subsequently repaid and there have been no losses to the public purse, closer scrutiny of the details suggest taxpayers paid a price far beyond the publicly provided numbers (such as the TARP), as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger. The Fed has bestowed upon the banks seemingly permanent options to reward executives and shareholders by capping the downside while permitting an unlimited upside. Over the course of the crisis the Fed made loans of over $7 trillion to financial institutions at negligible rates of interest, with no quid pro quo.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 508