Via an investor newsletter at FTN Financial Friday (no link):
While the headlines of government largesse were surging across the screens this morning, this one caught our eye from a competing firm: Fed Gives Yankees 15 Additional Wins.
There's nothing the Fed can't do, apparently.
Who knew? Via Bloomberg Thursday night, comes this:
Merrill Lynch & Co. Chief Executive Officer John Thain told employees that Bank of America Corp. "cut our trading lines" in the days before it bought the firm, signaling a loss of confidence in the brokerage's ability to pay.
Thain made the comments while explaining his decision to sell Merrill,...
This pretty much says it all -- spreads on A2/P2 nonfinancial commercial paper literally have blown up in a liquidity crisis that really is amazingly far-reaching. The spread covers high and low quality 30 day nonfinancial commercial paper, and it's pretty clear how unprecedented the spread jump is.
...
(Update 1: Edited to clarify remarks on GE, GMAC)
At least, Floyd Norris at the New York Times clearly would, taking some history into view:
The government Tuesday nationalized the American International Group, the financial giant that could not find anyone else willing to lend it the billions of dollars it needed to stay afloat.
That is not...
Just a not-so-subtle reminder that even for the Fed, there are costs to be borne of building a bail-out nation:
The Treasury Department announced Wednesday that it would provide cash to the Federal Reserve through a new auction program to fund the central bank's operations to provide liquidity to financial markets.
In a statement...
It's missing a few key milestones in our book -- but CNN is one of the first major media to attempt to put a basic timeline together.
Uh-oh. For those that believe CDS markets are soothsayers for financial futures, movement in both Goldman and Morgan Stanley Wednesday is well-worth paying attention to. Per Reuters:
Five-year credit default swaps on Morgan Stanley rose by 40 basis points to 796 basis points, or $796,000 a year to protect $10 million of debt, while Goldman's swaps rose by 16 basis...
We can't stop laughing here in the HW newsroom, and with a fist pound to DealBreaker for the title of this post, off we go....watch the two guys in the upper right hand corner behind the journalist reporting on Lehman's collapse. Live TV at its most vulnerable.
Fannie, Freddie, Lehman, Merrill, AIG decimated within a span of merely seven days. And rumors of more to follow this week.
Wow. Our newsroom has been busy Sunday afternoon, and will be working overtime throughout the night, most likely.
Below, some links to tide readers over until Monday hits:
In HW's initial coverage of the Fannie/Freddie bailout, we wrote that the move essentially made the Treasury into the world's largest hedge fund:
The Treasury said it will appoint two independent asset managers as financial agents of the U.S. government to manage the a government portfolio of MBS with the goal of “promoting stabiliity and protecting taxpayers.”...
