Fed Loads Up Balance Sheets, Begins Europe Bailout On Same Week It Promises Not To: Data

By Eleazar David Meléndez: Subscribe to Eleazar's RSS feed
December 20, 2011 2:17 PM EST
In spite of spending most of the last week reassuring the public that it would not use its resources to bail out European banks and having decided against engaging on another round of balance sheet expansion, data shows the U.S. Federal Reserve engaged in precisely those two actions that week.
On Tuesday, the top decision-making body of the U.S. Federal Reserve held a monthly meeting in which -- according to a statement released that day -- it ultimately decided against the new round of monetary easing that many market observers had anticipated. On Wednesday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke met with Republican lawmakers, telling them behind closed doors that no bailout of Europe was forthcoming.
On Thursday, however, data released by that central banking entity showed that, in spite of public pronouncements and private promises to the contrary, the U.S. central bank tacitly did those very things last week.
A particularly troublesome datapoint further suggests the Fed quietly bailed out a major financial institution midweek, something at least one bank strategist has already surmised.