Academic

If you triangulate from the SEC's '34 act, anyway.  A nice post by Eric Posner here.

While we're at it, the loan the Fed made to Lehman after bankruptcy does suggest, as Andrew Sorkin notes, that the strange claim that central bank needs good collateral in exchange for discount window money isn't a serious one.  The statute doesn't require it, and I haven't yet seen the reg that does.  More here.  All of this means what you've already suspected.  It would be unprecedented, just like Bear Stearns and AIG were unprecedented, but the Fed could get around the TARP issues entirely by opening up its discount window to the auto companies.  It has said it won't ... and I suspect that Bernanke doesn't want to create the precedent.  But it could.