WHERE YOUR MONEY WENT: Foreign Banks Tapped Fed’s Secret Lifeline Most at Crisis Peak. “The biggest borrowers from the 97-year-old discount window as the program reached its crisis-era peak were foreign banks, accounting for at least 70 percent of the $110.7 billion borrowed during the week in October 2008 when use of the program surged to a record. The disclosures may stoke a reexamination of the risks posed to U.S. taxpayers by the central bank’s role in global financial markets.” Wasn’t this happening at the same time European leaders were bashing “Cowboy capitalism” in the United States?