Published: September 19, 2008 10:06 am      

Multiple quick fixes tried for US financial crisis

WASHINGTON — Urgently moving on multiple fronts to stem the worst financial crisis in decades, the government on Friday said it would safeguard assets in money market mutual funds and temporarily banned short-selling of financial company stocks. The Treasury Department asked Congress to give it sweeping power to buy up toxic debt that has unhinged Wall Street.

President Bush authorized Treasury to tap up to $50 billion from a Depression-era fund to insure the holdings of eligible money market mutual funds. And the Federal Reserve announced it will expand its emergency lending program to help support the $2 trillion in assets of the funds.

Both moves are designed to bolster the huge money market mutual fund industry, which has come under stress in recent days.

The Fed said it is expanding its emergency lending efforts to allow commercial banks to finance purchases of asset-backed paper from money market funds. The central bank's move should help the funds meet demands for redemptions.

The Securities and Exchange Commission early Friday imposed a temporary emergency ban on short-selling of financial company stocks, a trading method that bets the stocks will go down. As the financial crisis widened, entreaties had come from all quarters to stem a swarm of short-selling contributing to the collapse of stock values in investment and commercial banks.

Bush planned to discuss the swirl of emergency actions in a Rose Garden statement later Friday.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke are crafting a massive rescue plan to buy up dodgy assets held by troubled banks and other financial institutions at the heart of the nation's financial crisis.

Congressional leaders said they expected to get the plan Friday and act on it before Congress recesses for the election.

Word of the rescue plan sent a wave of relief through Wall Street, sparking a 400-point rally in the Dow Jones industrials in morning trading Friday. The government's actions could help alleviate the uncertainty that has been sending the markets into tumult over the past week. Lending has grinded to a virtual standstill in the wake of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Global stock markets roared higher, too.

And European Central Bank, Swiss National Bank and Bank of England offered up more cash Friday. The three banks put a combined $90 billion into money markets in a lockstep move.

The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Chris Dodd, D-Conn., warned the United States could be "days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system" and said Congress is working quickly to prevent that.

Dodd told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday that the nation's credit is seizing up and people can't get loans.

The ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, Sen. Richard Shelby, said the U.S. has "been lurching from one crisis to another" and predicted the new bailout plan would cost at least half a trillion dollars.

"We hope to move very quickly. Time is of the essence," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said after Paulson and Bernanke briefed congressional leaders Thursday night.

Stocks on Wall Street shot up more than 400 points late Thursday on word that a plan was in the works. Fallout from the housing and credit debacles have badly bruised the economy and pushed unemployment to a five-year high.

"I don't say any prudent money manager would say we're out of the woods, but right in this moment it all seems positive and leading toward an upward move for the market going into Friday session," said Scott Fullman, director of derivative investment strategy for New York-based institutional broker WJB Capital Group.

Fullman said the biggest bonus of any potential government plan is that it is being put together to help the banking industry as a whole. Until now, the Treasury and Fed have selectively bailed out institutions that were the most vulnerable.

"This staves off Judgment Day," said Anthony Sabino, professor of law and business at St. John's University. "This is a detox for banks, and will help cleanse themselves of the bad mortgage securities, loans and everything else that has hurt them."

The roots of the current crisis can be traced to lax lending for home mortgages ’’’ especially subprime loans given to borrowers with tarnished credit ’’’ during the housing boom. Lenders and borrowers were counting on home prices to keep zooming upward. But when the housing market went bust, home prices plummeted. Foreclosures spiked as people were left owing more on their mortgage than their home was worth. Rising mortgage rates also clobbered some homeowners.

As financial companies racked up multibillion-dollar losses on soured mortgage investments, and credit problems spread globally, firms hoarded cash and clamped down on lending. That crimped consumer and business spending, dragging down the national economy ’’’ a vicious cycle policymakers have been trying to break.

"The root cause of the stress in the capital markets is the real estate correction," Paulson said, adding he hopes to have a solution "aimed right at the heart of this problem."

Bernanke said a resolution would help "get our economy moving again."

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, discounted the idea of setting up a new agency ’’’ similar to the Resolution Trust Corp. ’’’ established in 1989 to help resolve a savings and loan crisis at a cost to taxpayers of $125 billion.

"It will be the power ’’’ it may not be a new entity. It will be the power to buy up illiquid assets," Frank said. "There is this concern that if you had to wait to set up an entity, it could take too long."

The federal government already has pledged more than $600 billion in the past year to bail out, or help bail out, some of the biggest names in American finance. There was no immediate word on how much the new rescue plan might cost.

The SEC on Friday said it was acting in concert with the U.K. Financial Services Authority in taking emergency action to prohibit short selling in financial companies to protect the integrity of the securities market and boost investor confidence.

"The commission is committed to using every weapon in its arsenal to combat market manipulation that threatens investors and capital markets," SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said in a statement. "The emergency order temporarily banning short-selling of financial stocks will restore equilibrium to markets."