Thursday July 10, 5:46 pm ET
By Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer
Investment firms didn't draw emergency Fed loans for first time since program started
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a sign of some improvement in the credit crisis, Wall Street firms for the first time didn't borrow from the Federal Reserve's emergency lending program and commercial banks also scaled back.
Investment firms didn't draw such loans for the week ending July 9. They borrowed just $1.7 billion in the previous week ending July 2, down from $6.1 billion in the week before that. Such borrowing rose as high as $38.1 billion in early April.
The Fed opened its emergency program to investment firms on March 17.