Slowly, piece by piece, the inside details of what happened during the financial meltdown are coming to light. The latest disclosure is that JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon and General Electric (GE) CEO Jeffrey Immelt were on the New York Federal Reserve Board in 2008, when their institutions got enormous loans, as reported by the New York Times.

This little story tells you just how the insiders do their wheeling and dealing. On Sept. 15, JPMorgan Chase received a $3 billion loan from the Fed. On 12 occasions in October and November 2008, GE issued short term IOUs. The Fed purchased $16 billion of them.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will appear on 60 Minutes this Sunday to defend his controversial stimulus package, dubbed QE2, of buying $600 billion of Treasury securities.

In the CBS interview, Bernanke explains his intentions with QE2 and defends the notion that this stimulus will not lead to inflation. He also told CBS that he is not ruling out the purchase of more securities.

This morning, my colleague Connie Madon reported that initial jobless claims showed a disappointing gain of just 39,000 jobs and an unemployment rate at a seven-month high of 9.8%. Remember that the Street expected job growth of 144,000. This disappointing data has helped push the Dow Jones as we head through the lunch hour. I wanted to take a look at a couple tidbits of news from the report, one that I find especially disturbing.

The U.S. Federal Reserve was forced to disclose its transactions during the financial meltdown. Some 23,000 transactions were published.

During the crisis, the Fed set up 10 different programs to funnel money to governments, banks, financial institutions, hedge funds and private corporations. One such program was called the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF). Under the program, dealers could pledge securities or bonds in exchange for Fed loans.

Fear gripped Wall Street on September 29, 2008, when the U.S. House of Representatives failed to pass the bailout package. On that day alone, banks borrowed a record $155.8 billion.

The Fed had set up a lending facility called the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF) to lend money to banks. As the crisis spread, borrowing increased almost daily. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) lists day-by-day borrowings:

It's a story for the record books. You could not have made this stuff up, it's so incredible.

The story deals with the behind the scenes activities of the Federal Reserve during the financial meltdown. The data revealed by the Fed and chronicled in the Wall Street Journal tell of the multi-trillion dollar loans the Fed made to financial institutions here in the US and abroad. In all, the Fed set up 10 different programs and lent some $3.3 trillion of credit.

Forgive me if I stray slightly, but I could not help thinking about how ironic it would be if someone leaked information as to the whereabouts of Wikileaks founder and "fearless leader" Julian Assange -- who is in hiding!

It would be even more ironic if a CIA operative who had his cover blown by Wikileaks decides what goes around comes around. Let's face it, in its own way Wikileaks has become a rogue nation, so why wouldn't the CIA get involved?

In the mean time, this has probably helped world markets as it has overtaken everything else as the big story of the past 48 hours. In a bizarre way, Assange may have achieved one of his goals by bringing the world closer together, sort of.

The eurozone debt crisis is spreading across Europe. The latest Irish bailout is not quelling the fear factor. Now, all eyes are turned to Spain, Portugal and Italy.

What has happened is that banking systems are freezing up, the Financial Times explains. One Spanish banker told the paper, "The bond and credit markets are completely closed."

• "This is not a rescue plan. It is the longest ransom note in history: Do what we tell you and you may, in time, get your country back," said Fintan O'Toole, a commentator and author who led a weekend protest by labor-union activists in central Dublin against the imminent bailout. He called the average interest rate being demanded "viciously extortionate."

With mortgage refinancing applications up recently and house prices on the rise in recent months, some might believe there is reason to be optimistic about the struggling housing sector. I don't subscribe to this belief. Instead, I look for delinquencies and foreclosures to spike in the slow economic growth, high unemployment quarters that probably lie ahead.

Already, real estate owned (REO) by lenders due to foreclosures -- perhaps the most hated term among bankers -- is climbing. Estimates are that a major share of the 7 million houses that have delinquent mortgages or are in some stage of foreclosure, as well as those yet to come, will be dumped on the market, adding to the already huge excessive inventory glut. Some 4.5 million loans are now in foreclosure or at least 90 days delinquent.