Report: Fed Banking Handouts Total $8 Trillion

[msnbc] While the nation's largest banks were publicly reassuring nervous investors of their stability during the height of the financial crisis, they were also quietly approaching the Federal Reserve, hat in hand. The total price tag: $7.77 trillion, many times the amount of the better-known TARP bailout.

The magnitude of the government's assistance to struggling banks allowed them to grow even bigger and continue paying executives billions in compensation, a report in Bloomberg Markets January issue said Monday.

It's worth stressing that these additional handouts were not part of TARP, but were additional measures taken by the Fed to prop up the failing banking sector.