From the horse's mouth:
"As I have said in speeches and in testimony before the Congress, and as the Government Accountability Office and other reviewing bodies have found, the Federal Reserve implemented these emergency lending programs to provide liquidity and to prevent the collapse of the financial system during a period of tremendous financial stress. Working with the Administration and the Congress, we accomplished that goal"and
"Lending is not spending and thus it is misleading to add up a succession of loans that were paid off on a revolving basis. A good analogy might be a family’s mortgage: if a family received a $200,000 mortgage loan, then refinanced two years later to take advantage of lower rates, again borrowing $200,000, it would be misleading to say it had borrowed $400,000. Likewise, ifa bank lends $1,000 for a year at a time, $1,000 a month at a time for a year, and $1,000 a day at a time for a year--repaying the loans at the end of each period--the economic result is that the borrower has borrowed just a total of $1,000 in each case, and it would be incorrect to say that the borrower would have borrowed $12,000 in the second instance, and $365,000 in the third instance"
