In the lead-up to the financial crisis that crippled the American economy and plunged the country into a recession, the Federal Reserve made trillions in undisclosed loans to struggling banks and financial institutions, according to official documents obtained by Bloomberg News. Banks then turned those loans into more than $13 billion in previously undisclosed profits.

The total commitment of the Fed loans amounted to $7.77 trillion, and unlike the funds made available by the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the loans came with virtually no strings attached for the banks:

The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he “wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.

“TARP at least had some strings attached,” says Brad Miller, a North Carolina Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, referring to the program’s executive-pay ceiling. “With the Fed programs, there was nothing.”

In one month, Morgan Stanley — one of the most vulnerable financial companies at the time — took $107 billion in secret loans, enough to pay off a tenth of the nation’s delinquent mortgages. The loans, like those made to other institutions, were never reported to Morgan Stanley’s shareholders or the taxpayers who subsidized them.

Other banks drew similar loans without disclosing them. Bank of America, for instance, held $86 billion in public debt on the day then-CEO Ken Lewis declared his company “one of the strongest and most stable major banks in the world.” Bank of America’s Fed borrowing peaked at $91.4 billion in February 2009; at the same time, it benefited from $45 billion in TARP loans.

And even while members of Congress were working to overhaul the nation’s financial regulatory system, the banks and the Fed kept them in the dark about the loans. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), one of the architects of the Wall Street reform act that eventually became law, and former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), the GOP’s lead negotiator on TARP, told Bloomberg they were unaware of the specifics of such loans.

Had Congress had such information, members of both parties would have changed their votes to favor Wall Street reform, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said. Former Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), meanwhile, said knowledge of the loans could have led to a push to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, which prohibited banks from owning investment companies and vice versa, thereby limiting their size and vulnerability to such crises.

The secret nature of the loans, however, instead helped Wall Street work to “preserve a broken status quo” that allowed its biggest banks to grow even larger than they were before the crisis. The nation’s largest banks have turned more in profit in the last 30 months than they did in nearly eight years preceding the crisis, all while spending millions to derail significant reform legislation. And since the Dodd-Frank Act became law, they have spent millions more to weaken its rules and prevent certain regulations from taking effect. Bank lobbying, in fact, is now on pace to reach a record high this year.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) is outraged that executives at the government-seized mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will receive a combined $12.8 million in bonuses after meeting only “modest goals.” He even held a press conference this week demanding the bonuses be undone. And last night, Barrasso told Fox News that it’s “absolutely wrong” and almost un-American for the bailed out firms to be handing out such large bonuses. Watch it:

Democratic lawmakers have been rightly upset by the bonuses as well, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) saying yesterday that they induced his “gag reflex.” But while it’s welcome to see a Republican senator care about excessive executive compensation, especially at a bailed out firm, where was Barrasso when this happened back in 2009?

Back then, President Obama wanted to cap executive compensation at banks bailed out by taxpayers, but “Republicans hate[d] the idea.” “[I]s this still America? Do we really tell people how to run [a business], and who to pay and how much to pay?” Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) asked at the time. Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) explained, “I really don’t want the government to take over these businesses and start telling them everything about what they can do.”

Had Barrasso broken with his party at the time to take a stance similar to the one he is now espousing, he could have helped tip the political balance in favor of reigning in executive compensation at bailed out firms, whether they be banks or Fannie and Freddie.

Our guest blogger is Adam Hersh, an economist at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

This is the House Republican’s idea of a “jobs agenda”? They must be joking. In fact, the policy platform outlined by House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) offers a laundry list of half-baked policies that are resounding jobs killers. That’s because, across the board, the Republican “jobs agenda” reduces demand, undermines middle class families, blocks development of renewable energy industries, and recreates the possibility of future financial crises.

The Republican budget plan, for instance, is the most complete articulation of the GOP’s flawed strategy for job creation and economic growth. Passed by the House on a party-line vote in April, it was rejected by the Senate. But the plan still illustrates core party principles that voters should know are at stake in the 2012 elections. The Republican budget:

• Ends Medicare as we know it, kicking low income and middle class retirees into the Kafkaesque and inefficient private insurance market.

• Tears gaping holes in public investments in education and lifelong learning, efficiency enhancing infrastructure and energy modernization, and science research and technological R&D that create jobs today, “crowd-in” private investment, and provide a foundation for long-run sustained economic growth.

• Offers tax cuts to U.S. billionaires paid for by raising taxes on the middle class and shredding social protections for those hit hardest by the economic downturn, the most efficient policies to boost jobs and economic growth in the short-term.

All told, the Republican budget would kill an estimated 1 million jobs.

The budget, however, wasn’t the only indication of the GOP’s priorities. The Republican “jobs agenda” presents a litany of bills that in fact provide explicit subsidies for corporate oil, coal, and gas producers. Those subsidies, and the stranglehold big oil, coal, and gas companies have on national energy policy, are blocking the development of a fledgling advanced technology manufacturing industry that will create jobs right here in the United States: the renewable energy industry. While the rest of the world, including China, is fighting to develop a future based on renewable energy, the Republican “jobs agenda” would keep the U.S. mired in early 20th century technology.

But perhaps no policy is a bigger jobs-and-growth killer than the unregulated financial predation and speculation that created the housing bubble, financial crisis, and economic weakness the U.S. economy now faces. But the Republican “jobs agenda” works tirelessly to recreate the financial policy conditions that created those crises in the first place. On the GOP’s agenda are plans to:

• Gut consumer financial protections put into law by the July 2010 Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, passed with only one Republican House member dissenting

• Gut funding from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — the regulatory body charged to make sure that derivatives and futures speculation does not metastasize as a “financial weapon of mass destruction,” derailing the U.S. economy.

Need I say more? Republicans have no job creation agenda.

Pawlenty Campaign Co-Chair Vin Weber, Former Top Lobbyist For Freddie Mac

Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s (R-MN) quest for the White House has thus far failed to catch fire with voters or big money donors. In a potential bid to rake in donations from the financial sector, Pawlenty has begun demanding a repeal of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a set of reforms enacted last year to prevent another meltdown and guard consumers from abusive lending practices.

Pawlenty has suggested that blame for the financial crisis rests only with the “catastrophic scandal of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” the two government sponsored mortgage giants. But for all his bluster about Freddie Mac, which required a massive bailout in 2008, Pawlenty had no problem making Freddie’s top government enabler a leader in his presidential campaign.

When he announced his campaign, Pawlenty tapped William Strong, a vice chairman of Morgan Stanley, and Vin Weber, a veteran K Street lobbyist, as his campaign co-chairs. And Weber is not just any corporate lobbyist.

According to a review by ThinkProgress, Weber represented Freddie Mac for an entire decade, from 1998 to 2008. The partnership between Freddie Mac and Weber ended in 2008 when, as part of the government bailout deal, Freddie Mac was barred from hiring lobbyists. For some of the period Weber represented the company, his firm was paid as much as $360,000 a year to lobby for Freddie Mac. As reports from the AP and MinnPost.com from 2008 reveal, Weber helped create the “catastrophic scandal” his boss Pawlenty now laments:

Former Minnesota congressman Vin Weber’s name shows up in an AP story today about how Freddie Mac fended off regulation over the years with the help of an army of lobbyists. [...] “I’ve seen the article, and it’s pretty much correct,” Weber said today.

Pawlenty’s double standard has shades of Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. At the time, McCain tried to deflect blame from the big banks and mortgage companies to only government-backed entities like Freddie and Fannie, as Pawlenty is now attempting. However, the New York Times reported that McCain’s campaign manager at the time, Rick Davis, had been paid $2 million by Freddie and Fannie to set up a lobbying front group. The major difference? Davis ended his work for Freddie Mac in 2005. Weber, Pawlenty’s co-chair, continued to push for bailouts and loopholes for the giant well until such lobbying was barred and a taxpayer rescue was secured.

Less than three years after receiving $10 billion in bailout money from American taxpayers, Goldman Sachs informed its employees recently that it will fire 1,000 workers in the United States and elsewhere, shifting their jobs to the cheaper Singaporean labor market.

According to Fox Business, Goldman Sachs has quietly informed workers and lawmakers of its plan to outsource 1,000 jobs in an attempt to inoculate itself from the impending blowback:

Goldman is so concerned about the potential for criticism that the firm’s representatives have been alerting staffers of lawmakers in Washington of the hiring spree in recent weeks as a way to mollify any concerns they may have about previously undisclosed plans to add 1,000 jobs to the firm’s Singapore office, according to people in Washington with direct knowledge if the matter. Goldman is concerned about criticism because it is adding those jobs while it is planning what could be a significant retrenchment in its U.S. workforce, these people say.

Goldman Sachs has also worked to protect itself by hiring former Republican Sen. Judd Gregg (NH) as an “international advisor.” It is not unreasonable to assume that Gregg’s 26 years in Washington will help the investment firm’s attempts to placate critics.

The move to shift 1,000 jobs to Singapore is part of an overall effort by Goldman Sachs to cut $1 billion in operating costs over the next year. However, Goldman is firing American workers at a time of record profits for the company, which raked in $2.7 billion in profits in the first three months of 2011 alone.

Goldman’s plan is helped by conservatives in Washington who have prevented Congress from discouraging corporations from outsourcing. Last fall, Senate Republicans voted unanimously against a bill that would have ended tax breaks for companies that shift American jobs overseas.

Many conservatives justify outsourcing by arguing that not only would companies be more profitable by shifting low-skilled work to developing countries, but laid-off American workers would be forced to re-educate themselves for new, high-paying industries. However, this move by Goldman Sachs is particularly troubling for that theory because, according to a source with knowledge of the matter, the 1,000 Singaporean jobs are likely to be “high-paying, skilled positions in sales and investment banking.” Whereas highly educated workers may once have imagined themselves immune from the specter of outsourcing, Goldman Sachs has shown that is not the case.

With today’s news, Goldman joins the ranks of top U.S. corporations like GE, Chevron, Intel, and others who have collectively outsourced over 2.4 million American jobs in the past decade.

At different times, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has both supported and derided the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), better known as the bank bailouts of 2008. Most recently, Romney called it a “slush fund” that “should be shut down.”

Today, however, Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign stopped at Lincoln Financial Group in Concord, New Hampshire, where hundreds of the company’s employees turned out to hear Romney talk about jobs and the economy. Lincoln Financial Group and its parent company, Lincoln National Corporation, took $950 million in TARP funds in 2008.

That’s not the worst of it, though. Originally, Lincoln Financial was eligible for much less in TARP funding because it did not qualify for money marked for thrift savings companies. To become eligible, it bought a small thrift savings company that, on its own, would have received only $350,000 in TARP funding. Because of how TARP funding was calculated, however, Lincoln Financial was eligible for the $950 million it received solely because it added the small thrift savings company. In 2010, the Special Inspector of TARP issued an oversight report about the program in which he detailed the way Lincoln Financial gamed the system to receive more funding:

Hartford and Lincoln were able to obtain CPP funds by buying small thrift savings institutions and becoming thrift/savings and loan holding companies, thereby meeting the technical criteria for receipt of CPP funds. The amount of CPP funds provided, however, was then determined by the assets of the holding company (i.e., the parent insurance company), not just the assets of the much smaller qualifying thrifts. In the case of Lincoln, for example, the company was able to obtain $950 million in TARP funds after it acquired a thrift that, on its own, would have been able to obtain at most $350,000 (if it would have qualified for CPP funding at all). Moreover, in using TARP funds, there was no requirement that TARP funding be used in connection with the subsidiary thrifts’ activities. As it happened, the insurance companies reported that they used little (in the case of Hartford) or no (in the case of Lincoln) TARP funds in connection with the subsidiary thrifts’ activities but rather used the vast bulk of the funds to support their insurance businesses. Stated another way, simply by purchasing comparatively tiny thrifts, Hartford and Lincoln — companies whose primary businesses (unlike other CPP participants) have little to do with lending to consumers and businesses — gained access to more than $4.3 billion in taxpayer funds, an amount that is many multiples of the thrifts’ total assets.

In 2009, Romney told the crowd at the Values Voters Summit that, when the government starts “bailing out banks…we have we have every good reason to be alarmed and to speak our mind.” That apparently wasn’t the case today. According to reports from the event, Romney never mentioned the bailouts even while standing inside of a company that benefited directly from them.