Fed Lending Increases Ultimate Cost of Bank Failures; 111 Banks Fed Lent Money to Failed

``[The lending] limits moved from custom to law in 1991, when Congress formally restricted the Fed’s ability to help failing banks. A Congressional investigation found that more than 300 banks that failed between 1985 and 1991 owed money to the Fed at the time of their failure. Critics said the Fed’s lending had increased the cost of those failures. The central bank was chastened for a generation but in 2007, facing a new banking crisis, the Fed once again started to broaden access to the discount window... The Fed does not care about boundaries or what is legal or not. The obvious implication is mechanisms to define Fed boundaries would be futile. We need to eliminate the Fed itself.''