Bloomberg writes "Reserve Primary Tops Users of Fed Aid to Money Funds". It says, "Reserve Primary, the money-market mutual fund whose September 2008 collapse helped freeze global credit markets, was the biggest user of a government-backed program that enabled the industry to meet investor withdrawals during the financial crisis. Vanguard Group Inc. and Legg Mason Inc. were the only money-fund providers among the industry's top 10 that didn't utilize the Federal Reserve's Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility, or AMLF, according to data released today by the U.S. central bank. Funds run by JPMorgan Chase & Co. sold $17.7 billion in asset-backed commercial paper to banks under the program, more than any family except Reserve.... The Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul approved by Congress in July required the Fed to release information about its lending programs. The central bank has never before made public specific, transaction-level detail about its lending." See also, WSJ's "Absent Help, More Funds Might Have Broken Buck", which says, "Just one money-market fund blew up during the financial crisis. Without help from the U.S. government, the number might have been much higher, data released by the Federal Reserve show. Nine of the 10 largest money-market fund companies at the time, with two-thirds of all money-market-fund assets under management, turned to a financial first-aid program called the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money-Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility. The funds, facing an illiquidity squeeze, sold billions of dollars of commercial paper to major banks, which in turn used money borrowed from the Fed to make the purchases."
