From the FT: Officials have reviewed the nuclear option of providing an Irish-style sovereign guarantee for all US bank deposits and many or all categories of bank debt as a means of restoring banks’ access to private funds. But they fear that providing formal guarantees only for banks would trigger the implosion of financial firms [...]

The G-7 finance ministers say they’re going to “take decisive action and use all available tools to support systemically important financial institutions and prevent their failure.” Hank Paulson says that: As we develop plans to purchase equity … we are working to develop a standardized program that is open to a broad array of financial [...]

Peter Fisher used to run the open market desk at the New York Fed. Then he was Under Secretary of the Treasury during the Paul O’Neill years. Now he’s co-head of fixed income at BlackRock, the firm that’s managing those $29 billion in Bear Stearns assets the Fed took on back in March. So you [...]

John McCain is suggesting on the campaign trail today that the IRS rules that require owners of retirement accounts (IRA, 401ks, etc.) to withdraw a certain amount (there’s a formula) from those accounts every year after they turn 70 1/2 ought to be suspended because of the market crash. Sayeth the Senator from Arizona: To [...]

Barry Ritholtz, one of those guys who’s been right a lot over the past couple years about the market, is sniffing a market bottom. He’s just put up a post listing 10 “charts, signals, indicators” that, as he puts it, “suggest to us that we are increasingly close to a bottom that can be purchased [...]

Heidi Moore of the WSJ has a fascinating account of a panel discussion this morning featuring Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, Larry Fink of BlackRock, Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone and Glenn Hutchins of Silver Lake. I know a lot of people have soured on anything anybody on Wall Street [...]

Fixing Global Finance, the new book from The Dean himself, FT economics columnist Martin Wolf, just arrived in the mail. Sadly, it doesn’t appears to be about fixing the mess we’re in today. It’s about fixing the huge current account imbalances (we run ginormous deficits, China and Japan run big surpluses) that Wolf says brought [...]

The reports keep coming (and they started, sort of, right here on this blog) that Treasury is putting together a plan that will involve recapitalizing banks (in exchange for equity stakes), temporarily guaranteeing all deposits, and guaranteeing all bank debt maturing in the next 36 months or so. There’s talk in D.C. that they may [...]

Quick anecdote: A friend of mine who works at a place that does GMAT prep gave me a call last night to say that the place was full of ex-Lehman employees. It’s that time of the business cycle, folks. Everyone back to grad school! Let’s just hope these people can get student loans… Barbara!