Banks are turning to an obscure government-linked lender to shore up their balance sheets following the industry’s rockiest period in years, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Federal Home Loan Bank system — established during the Great Depression to help promote mortgage lending and now a source of liquidity for banks of all stripes — issued a record $495 billion of debt in March to fund loans, which are called advances, the system’s Office of Finance said. Banks ramped up borrowing that month as customers pulled out deposits and investors panicked over failures that threw the stability of the U.S. financial system into question. Charles Schwab Corp., a brokerage firm whose bank operations experienced significant withdrawals, on Monday disclosed that it had $46 billion in FHLB advances in the first quarter, up from $12 billion in the prior quarter and zero a year earlier. Other banks are also expected to disclose their advances in the coming weeks. The 11 government-sponsored home-loan banks have drawn scrutiny in recent weeks because Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and Silvergate Capital Corp. borrowed billions from them. Those banks all went out of business in March in a stunning series of collapses. Critics say that the home-loan banks have gone beyond their mission of supporting housing and that the closures show they sometimes prop up banks that aren’t stable.