Wow! Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have asked the Federal Reserve to become bank holding companies, and the Fed–which just so happens to regulate bank holding companies–has said ‘come on down’. We’ll be learning over the next few weeks what exactly this means, but I have a few off-the-top-of-the-head thoughts.
1) Goldman and Morgan …
It’s going to be an interesting week. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has asked Congress for a $700 billion blank check to buy junky mortgage securities. This was in keeping with the “trust me” approach that Paulson first tried out with Congress in July in the case of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–Give me the leeway to do whatever I deem …
The Treasury Department has asked Congress for permission to spend $700 billion buying up unloved mortgage securities. Add that to $200 billion pledged to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that $85 billion loan to AIG, and $29 billion in Bear Stearns junk still stuck on the Federal Reserve’s books, and you get a price tag of $1.014 trillion. …
Ethan Harris, the chief U.S. economist at bankrupt Lehman Brothers, says it’s been “the most tumultuous two weeks of my personal and professional life.” Even on Friday, with the tumult settled somewhat by Barclays’ purchase of Lehman’s core business and Hank Paulson’s plans to purchase the American financial system, things were still …
I used to work at Mutual Funds magazine, before Time Inc. shut it down, so give a girl a break for caring about the following.
Yesterday American Beacon, a firm that manages $30 billion in assets, sent out word that for the foreseeable future if institutions want to cash out of its money market fund, they’ll have to take at least part …
Wanna hear me blabber on with Warren Olney of Public Radio International’s To the Point about financial stuff? I knew it!
I just had an interesting conversation with Tom Newton, the co-founder of Institutional Cash Distributors, a company that runs a trading platform for folks like state treasurers and corporate cash managers to buy and sell money markets.
I was curious to know where institutional investors moved their money to after withdrawing it from …
John McCain, after feinting in the direction of SEC Chairman Chris Cox, has decided that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are to blame for all our nation’s ills. This would be convenient because Fannie in particular had a long and lucrative symbiotic relationship with the Democratic Party. But is it true?
Fannie and Freddie were freakish …
I know AIG was like half a dozen freak-outs ago, but I was still happy to see in the WSJ this morning that the insurance company’s new CEO is talking about what’s next. Happy because I’m sure a lot of people with AIG policies want to know. Here’s an excerpt:
Edward Liddy, the new chief executive of American International Group Inc.,
…
This morning Treasury came out saying it would backstop money market mutual funds, shoring up investor confidence to prevent a mass exodus. As I wrote yesterday, that’s the much bigger threat to money markets right now—mass redemptions, not funds marking down the value of bad assets (e.g., commercial paper from the now-bankrupt Lehman …
I have another explain-it-some-for-you piece up on TIME.com about Bailie Mae (or is it Rescue Ray, or Vulture Mac?).
Markets around the world are, of course, going bonkers with glee about it (Bailie Mae, not my article). I don’t think it’s the plan itself that has financial stocks rising–since no one really knows what the plan is. It’s …
SEC Chairman Chris Cox has apparently decided to ban short-selling for a while. This followed on the UK Financial Services Authority’s decision to ban short-selling in financial stocks until January 16.
The Code of Financial Writing decrees that I’m supposed to condemn this as a politically motivated intrusion into the glorious workings …