Deutsche Bank's $100 mm 'Gesture'
Financial Times | Insert joke about 'gesture' here

Deutsche Bank declined to comment, but people close to the situation said its decision to tap the window was taken to show support for the Fed’s move to combat the credit squeeze.

Admittedly, this is still all rumorz (which are, of course, the less-credible internet cousin of rumors), but all this was confirmed by the WSJ's morning briefing (which is subscription only, and thus not linked).

The Fed isn't scheduled to provide hard data on how many banks took advantage of the lower discount rate until a routine Thursday announcement, though one person familiar with a big bank's plans tells the Journal the bank today would borrow $100 million as a gesture even though the institution doesn't need the money. A Wall Street firm plans to offer collateral to its bank, since the bank, under the Fed's discount-window plan, can now put up such collateral as part of a loan from the Fed, the Journal adds. And that suggests the Fed's plan, for now, is working, since the sudden illiquidity of usually acceptable collateral is what triggered the crisis and caused the Fed to "blink," in the Journal's terminology, just 10 days after it said inflation rather than growth was its primary worry.