Why is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money
to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs?

America has two national budgets, one official, one unofficial. The
official budget is public record and hotly debated: Money comes in as
taxes and goes out as jet fighters, DEA agents, wheat subsidies and
Medicare, plus pensions and bennies for that great untamed socialist
menace called a unionized public-sector workforce that Republicans are
always complaining about. According to popular legend, we're broke and
in so much debt that 40 years from now our granddaughters will still
be hooking on weekends to pay the medical bills of this year's
retirees from the IRS, the SEC and the Department of Energy.

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

Most Americans know about that budget. What they don't know is that
there is another budget of roughly equal heft, traditionally
maintained in complete secrecy. After the financial crash of 2008, it
grew to monstrous dimensions, as the government attempted to unfreeze
the credit markets by handing out trillions to banks and hedge funds.
And thanks to a whole galaxy of obscure, acronym-laden bailout
programs, it eventually rivaled the "official" budget in size ­ a huge
roaring river of cash flowing out of the Federal Reserve to
destinations neither chosen by the president nor reviewed by Congress,
but instead handed out by fiat by unelected Fed officials using a
seemingly nonsensical and apparently unknowable methodology.