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This article was originally published by The Lever, an investigative newsroom. If you like this story, sign up for The Lever’s free newsletter.

The Federal Reserve has quietly delivered nearly half a trillion dollars to Wall Street with few strings attached over the past few months through an obscure government financial program intended for banks struggling to make cash payments.

These cash infusions could signal instability in the broader financial sector — and come as the central bank is besieged by potentially market-rattling turmoil following the Trump administration’s launch of a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

The New York Federal Reserve, a regional branch of the larger central bank that works to maintain the country’s financial stability, kicked off the new year by dumping nearly $97 billion into the banking sector since Dec. 31, 2025.

The move is the latest in a series of major cash transfers the New York Federal Reserve has recently delivered to Wall Street.

The infusions began with an $11 billion transfer on June 30. In October, the transfers became much more frequent, culminating in a massive $50 billion infusion on Halloween, as first reported by investigative news outlet DCReport. In total, after doling out little to no money since July 2020, the New York Federal Reserve has transferred more than $420 billion to Wall Street in the past seven months — a record amount from the program.

For comparison, that lump sum is nearly equivalent to the pot of money that Congress passed to bail out the banks during the 2008 financial crisis under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Amid the deluge, the central bank has encouraged Wall Street to make use of the program and lifted its $500 billion cap on such transactions, meaning there is no limit to how much banks can borrow to meet their cash liquidity needs.

All of these cash infusions — issued through an arcane and newly restructured division of the New York Federal Reserve branch — amount to some of the largest cash bailouts since the COVID-19 pandemic sent shock waves through financial markets in 2020.

Experts argue that this uptick in Federal Reserve lending could indicate that banks........

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