Since the end of August, the European Central Bank has been drawing on the foreign currency swap line established by the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, recently securing $1.8 billion to lend to European banks, most of it over a three-month time period. But the ECB does not name which banks or institutions are receiving these dollars. Who gets the money is anybody's guess.

In the response of worsening economic conditions in Europe, in late June the Fed announced that it was extending authority for such swap arrangements with the European Central Bank (ECB) and three other foreign ...