The Term Auction Facility (TAF) was a temporary program managed by the United States Federal Reserve designed to "address elevated pressures in short-term funding markets.
Eligible collateral is the same as that accepted for discount window loans and includes a wide range of financial assets.
[8][9] The Term Auction Facility formed a significant part of such global efforts, and empirical results indicate that it had a strong effect in reducing financial strains in the inter-bank money market, primarily through relieving financial institutions' liquidity concerns.
[10] On December 11, 2007, the Fed lowered its discount rate to 4.75%, but due to the lack of borrowing from the discount window in the previous weeks, and a lack of liquidity after the 2007 credit crunch, the Federal Reserve and several other central banks opened their short term lending windows, hoping to alleviate the strain on interbank lending markets.
[16] The maximum balance of outstanding loans peaked at $483 billion in March 2009, while profits to the Fed on the facility passed $700 million in that year.