Markets continue to be roiled by the upset of the effort to pass the touted Paulson bailout bill. As of this writing, the FTSE and Dj Stoxx 50 are up slightly, but money markets took a beating, the reaction worsened by end-of-quarter factors. From Bloomberg: The cost of borrowing in dollars overnight surged the most […]
Read more...Bloomberg gives a recap of the some of the credit market reaction in Asia, which is that borrowing has become, not surprisingly, more costly. Rates moved up even in Japan, whose banks are virtually unaffected by the financial crisis (out of a total $1 trillion plus in subprime debt, only an estimated $8 billion went […]
Read more...Our reader and sometimes contributor Lune worked on the Hill and was so kind as to send us his take on the choices facing the Senate and House leadership on the bailout bill, His position on it is rather clear: While many of you may be popping champagne bottles tonight in honor of the bailout […]
Read more...This report from Bloomberg: Rates in the $7 trillion-a-day market for borrowing and lending securities show that the logjam in credit markets is approaching the level seen after the March collapse of Bears Stearns Cos. Securities that can be borrowed at interest rates close to the Federal Reserve’s target rate for overnight loans between banks […]
Read more...I’m actually quite surprised. The stock market in a panic. I wonder whether Paulson and Bernanke have a Plan B. Jamie Galbraith outlined a good interim idea (needs tweaking but has merit) in the Washington Post last week. Hope someone paid attention. From Bloomberg: U.S. stocks plunged and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index tumbled […]
Read more...The numbers attached to various emergency interventions just keep getting bigger and bigger. From Blooomberg: The Federal Reserve increased the size of previously arranged currency swaps with foreign central banks to $620 billion from $290 billion to make more dollars available to banks worldwide. Banks and brokers have slowed lending as they struggle to restore […]
Read more...We had grumbled last week that the Treasury had left its money market guarnatee program in the never-never land of “we’ll get back to you with details. The program is now in effect on a short-term basis. One hang up with any program of this sort is that the powers that be do not want […]
Read more...An excellent comment in the Financial Times by Wolfgang Munchau discusses how the gold standard for handling banking crises, the Swedish model, would take even more discipline to implement in the US and how we are dong the reverse of what is needed.It is a levelheaded analysis which stands in stunning contrast with a bit […]
Read more...Did we say really? Even by the normal standards of Roubini’s tendency to hyperventilate state his case forcefully, the good professor rises to levels of choler heretofore unseen. Roubini focuses on many of the issues we have discussed in our earlier posts (most notably this one) but he teases out some of the issues in […]
Read more...For a quick, one-stop synopsis of the Mother of All Bailouts (as of this month), see this readable version at Clusterstock (we’ve become a recent convert to this site). Reader and sometimes contributor Lune, who was once a Congressional staffer and still subscribes to the the inside-the-Beltway press, provided a wrap of their coverage of […]
Read more...Various readers wrote us, and it was confirmed by a detailed report on the call at DealBreaker, that the Treasury Department held a conference call this evening for analysts on the bailout bill. A memo was evidently sent to SIFMA members; others may have been contacted by other means. But the report I got from […]
Read more...Banks are falling over like kingpins. Not good at all. First, on the Fortis salvage operation: Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg invested 11.2 billion euros ($16.3 billion) in Fortis, Belgium’s biggest financial-services firm, to restore confidence in the bank after shares fell 35 percent last week. Belgium will buy a 49 percent stake in Fortis’s […]
Read more...See here, sports fans. At least it isn’t three pages long any more. I haven’t gotten past noting that it is a “discussion draft”. Hope to have more substantive comments in due order. The Troubled Assets are initially limited to commercial and residential mortgages and instruments based on them. The Treasury has to go to […]
Read more...Apparently there has been a pretty weird announcement. Progress is being made to sound like resolution. Since the House Republicans weren’t part of the photo op, it isn’t at all clear whether this is real. First sighting from Clusterstock, will add updates as they come in: Update (12:35 a.m.): Nancy Pelosi speaks first. She says […]
Read more...The mainstream media, giving reports from Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi, who said last week there was a bailout deal imminent, are giving similar chipper reports of progress with appropriate caveats. From the New York Times, “Consensus on Rescue Plan Is Said to Be Near“: After a tumultuous week, including a contentious meeting at the […]
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