Good post, I rread this this morning in WSJ

The Federal Reserve's Covert Bailout of Europe

The Fed is using what is termed a "temporary U.S. dollar liquidity swap arrangement" with the European Central Bank (ECB). There are similar arrangements with the central banks of Canada, England, Switzerland and Japan. Simply put, the Fed trades or "swaps" dollars for euros.

the nontransparency of the swap arrangements is troublesome in a democracy. To his credit, Mr. Bernanke has promised more openness and better communication of the Fed's monetary policy goals. The swap arrangements are at odds with his promise. It is time for the Fed chairman to provide an honest accounting to Congress of what is going on.

Is the Fed / US taxpayer still secretly bailing out Europe..

If there's any bailing out it'll be to cover the exposure of US banks to troubled EU assets, not to bail out the EU.

The EU needs a bailout because it did not receive the same bailout as the US banks. The US Bank bailout was both overt handouts of cash as a stealth recapitalization. The stealth part is the one that hurts US taxpayers (and savers) the worst. Basically, the Fed drops short term rates to 0% - this allows banks to borrow money from them for nothing - it also has the effect of allowing the banks to pay depositors ~0% for their bank accounts and CD's. Meanwhile, the banks loan the money out at a profitable 6%+ while at the same time becoming much more selective in their loans which drives down default rates. This shit has been going on for 3 years now and the net effect is people that save money have been screwed by shit returns on their deposits with inflation having arrived and much, much higher inflation on the way. This is the practice that needs to end - get the Fed out of setting artificially low interest rates - let the market determine the level.