I recently came across this paper published by the St. Louis Fed that describes in detail how the Fed Balance Sheet (FedBS) has increased during the credit crisis:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/publicati....

In my blog, I have extracted the most important graphs and commented on the various programs and new lending facilities. It will save you some time reading the paper, as the graphs are the most important. In addition, I also look at the maturity distribution of the assets on the FedBS. As expected, they are heavily weighting towards the long-term of the curve, exposing themselves to huge interest rate risk. Funding long-term assets with short term liabilities is a game of musical chairs that has now gone from the banks to the Fed like an infection. I discuss this, amongst others here:

http://www.debtorsprisonblog.org/journal....