TARP, SSFIP, EESA, CPP, TALF, MMIFF... Are you feeling overwhelmed by all the new acronyms coming out of the US Treasury Department lately? Here's
a handy PDF reference guide to untangling the US government efforts to rescue banks, financial corporations, and other companies.
posted by Asparagirl
on Dec 29, 2008 -
10 comments
While the US equities markets were closed on Monday for Martin Luther King Day, stock markets around the world took a nosedive,
losing billions in equity; the markets in
Australia,
South Korea,
Japan,
China,
Indonesia, Hong Kong,
Germany,
France,
the UK, and
more countries have dropped at least 5% each (
Canada only fell 4.75%), even though most of those markets had already been seriously down for several days prior.
India has been hit particularly hard, at one point down a whopping 11%, tripping their markets' automatic
"circuit breakers" for a mandatory time-out period, before scraping back up to close at
8% down. US futures markets are
currently predicting a 650+ point drop just at the open Tuesday morning, before even a single trade goes through.
[more inside]
posted by Asparagirl
on Jan 22, 2008 -
306 comments
At a time when fed-up American citizens are
petitioning Congress to end the imprudent financial practices that caused the
housing bubble sub-prime mortgage crisis liquidity crisis impending recession -- including the banning of
SIV's and
refusing any bailouts for Wall Street, banks, or mortgage companies -- the United States Treasury Department
has just announced the creation of a giant-mega-ultra SIV called "M-LEC" made up of assets from several of the largest American banks. Already unofficially nicknamed "Sivie Mae" (or worse,
"the Frankenstein Fund"), it would be an off-balance-sheet way for these banks to pool and price the
ABCP's that they've lately been having trouble pricing and thus selling -- i.e. the liquidity crisis.
[more inside]
posted by Asparagirl
on Oct 16, 2007 -
82 comments
