Transcripts Show Fed Caught Off Guard in 2008

The Federal Reserve “released transcripts of 14 scheduled and emergency policy meetings it held in 2008, providing the most complete view yet into developments inside the nation’s central bank as the financial crisis worsened and threatened to plunge the U.S. into another Great Depression,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Two days after U.S. officials decided to let Lehman Brothers collapse in September 2008, and just before the Federal Reserve was about to unleash a torrent of new support programs to bolster a crumbling financial system, central-bank officials were still struggling to grasp the magnitude of the calamity that had hit the U.S. economy.

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