The banks might have avoided state-sponsored recapitalization, but every major bank in the entire world was taking liquidity assistance on a grand scale from its local central bank, and either directly or indirectly by way of the swap lines from the Fed. Using the Fed’s records we can track the liquidity support provided to a bank like Barclays on a daily basis, revealing a first hump of Fed borrowing during the Bear Stearns crisis and a second in the aftermath of Lehman.
