In some sense, these interventions were typical for a central bank operating in the context of a financial panic. But the size of the problem meant that the operations were unprecedented in their scale. The interventions made up more than $ trillion of Federal Reserve assets. There is no doubt that these interventions saved many solvent firms from collapse during the financial crisis.
Over time, panic eased and spreads in financial markets normalized. Once that happened, the private sector stopped borrowing from the Fed because it found the Fed’s penalty rates too onerous. As a result, the Fed shut down its special lending facilities in 2010.