by Calculated Risk on 5/06/2009 06:05:00 PM

From Reuters: US Senate expands credit lines to FDIC reserves

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday approved a measure to expand a government credit line for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp ... The FDIC ... has been able to tap the Treasury Department for up to $30 billion since 1991. That credit line would be increased to $100 billion under the new bill.

The House of Representatives has already passed its version of the legislation ...

Besides raising the cap on FDIC borrowing, the bill gives the federal insurer a $500 billion credit limit that will sunset at the end of next year.

Part of this is for the PPIP, see: Sorkin's ‘No-Risk’ Insurance at F.D.I.C.

[The F.D.I.C. is] going to be insuring 85 percent of the debt, provided by the Treasury, that private investors will use to subsidize their acquisitions of toxic assets. The program ... is the equivalent of TARP 2.0. Only this time, Congress didn’t get a chance to vote.
...
The F.D.I.C. is insuring the program, called the Public-Private Investment Program, by using a special provision in its charter that allows it to take extraordinary steps when an “emergency determination by secretary of the Treasury” is made to mitigate “systemic risk.”