It was hard to make sense of the data the Fed provided in the Excel spreadsheets. First of all, they were heavily redacted. Second, because banks were listed using a variety of names and acronyms, it was a challenge to add up numbers and pinpoint how much each bank had borrowed. Also, banks had borrowed from the Fed via different lending programs; thus transactions by the same bank were disclosed in different places in the spreadsheets. So it was difficult to tally the total that any given bank had outstanding from all programs on any given day. Notes Voskuhl:

[The raw data] didnt give you a very clear picture of just how active a borrower any particular bank was. We thought this was key to know because obviously, if youre going to the Fed, which is supposed to be the lender of last resort, and youre doing it more than any other bank, it indicates a kind of neediness for funds that you cant get anywhere else. And we knew soon after we got that initial batch of data that we wanted to come up with a more sophisticated way to look at it.

The group brought in Editor-at-large Robert Friedman, who worked chiefly on long-term projects. They said they needed more capacity to do a deep analysis of these numbers and what it meant about US banks, recalls Friedman. ^[36] Under the supervision of Friedman and Finance Managing Editor Otis Bilodeau, Kuntz and Keoun started to develop a master Excel file. At the end of December, the digital architecture was ready and the team began to enter all the Fed data into the new database. The purpose, says Keoun, was to produce a day-by-day account of each banks outstanding borrowings. ^[37] The team focused on the biggest banks firstGoldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroupbecause they suspected that these institutions had received the bulk of the Fed loans.

New tool. As the Excel file grew, Keoun and Kuntz had an idea. What if Bloomberg could create an interactive tool that would allow readers to see for themselves not only what individual banks had borrowed, but what each bank leader was saying about the health of the bank at the time? Brad and I had the suspicion that these bankers, these CEOs, in the midst of the crisis, were saying everythings fine, recalls Kuntz.

They were saying that at a time when they thought the details of their borrowing from the Fed would always be secret. Having a timeline allowed you to say, okay, two days before you hit this peak right here, where the banks a billion and a half dollars in hock to the Fed, the CEO was saying, We have a rock solid balance sheet.

Kuntz on how a timeline could illustrate contradictions.

A colorful and meticulously-documented display, adds Keoun, would make it impossible for viewers not to comprehend the massive scale of banks secret borrowings, both on an individual and collective basis. ^[38]

Editor Bilodeau was enthusiastic, but the project would be expensive, and would require staff and funding for a period of months. In late January, the three prepared a presentation for Editor-in-chief Winkler. I remember that Matt was absolutely 100 percent behind the project, says Keoun. At that point, I knew that this was going to be a great thing, because it had backing from the very top. David Yanofsky was brought in as graphics expert and to build the tool that could present the data visually.

The group agreed that the data visualization tool (or online graphical analyzer) would accompany a series of stories about peak lending by the biggest banks; Friedman would edit the series. As to when they could publish, the earlier, the better. But it would take time. Bloomberg was not prepared to name individual financial institutions until it had combed carefully through the data and could ensure that any specific numbers were ironclad. Says Executive Editor Bennett:

When you are doing something like this there are so many moving pieces that the chances of making mistakes are high. We did think about the competition and knew we had to move forward quickly, but we needed to go into the Zen zone and focus on getting it right. The key thing is that if you make a mistake, somebody is going to find it, and once you lose credibility on one piece, you lose credibility on the whole thing.