The New York Times reported about the magnitude of financial aid that the Federal Reserve provided big banks during the 2008-09 credit crisis. The report came from Bloomberg News, which had to mount a lengthy legal fight to wrest documents from the Fed that detailed its rescue efforts.

The New York Times report provided insights into the magnitude of the crisis:

Among all the rescue programs set up by the Fed, $7.77 trillion in commitments were outstanding as of March 2009, Bloomberg said. The nation’s six largest banks — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — borrowed almost half a trillion dollars from the Fed at peak periods, Bloomberg calculated, using the central bank’s data. According to the report, these six institutions accounted for 63% of the average daily borrowings from the Fed by all publicly traded United States banks, money management and investment firms, Bloomberg said.

The report also indicates the Fed provided Bear Stearns with $30 billion to see it through its 2008 buy- out by JPMorgan; this was in addition to the $29.5 billion in assets purchased by the Fed from Bear to assist in the buyout by JPMorgan. Citigroup, meanwhile, tapped the Fed for almost $100 billion in January 2009 — its peak during the crisis — and Morgan Stanley received $107 billion in Fed loans in September 2008.