Its largest overnight transaction, carried out September 26, 2008, was $35 billion. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would later tell FOXBusiness that his team pored through Fed disclosures and calculated that Merrill Lynch received some $1.5 trillion in short term loans from the Fed, separate from the discount window. Wells Fargo " If we were not forced to take the TARP money, we would have been able to raise private capital at that time."--Wells Fargo Chairman Dick Kovacevich, in a March 16, 2009, Bloomberg The government-mandated stress tests are "asinine." – Wells Fargo Chairman Dick Kovacevich Wells Fargo ranked behind only Bank of America as the largest recipient of assistance under the Term Auction Facility program. Wells Fargo had $45 billion worth of borrowings as of late February 2009. The bank may have needed to borrow so much cash because it inherited a truly dreadful mortgage portfolio when it acquired Wachovia in late 2008.