Sunday, December 23, 2007

Rescue Funds Aborted.

The nation's three biggest banks gave up on a fund intended to rescue tens of billions of dollars in troubled investments. The three banks leading the effort were Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.Banks could reactivate the fund if conditions worsen.
Wall Street's confidence in recent weeks has come from government-linked investors in Asia and the Middle East who have poured money into big financial firms.

The now-collapsed effort was intended to rescue bank-linked funds known as structured investment vehicles, or SIVs. The SIVs issued short-term debt at relatively low interest rates and used the proceeds to buy longer-term debt carrying higher rates, including debt backed by mortgages. Banks aimed to profit by pocketing the difference between the rates. At their peak, SIVs held some $340 billion in assets, a figure that fell to $265 billion by early December as they sold off some holdings.

The super-SIV was one of the two main elements of the Bush administration's response to the subprime mortgage crisis. The other, announced this month by President Bush, was an agreement among mortgage-industry participants to expedite new mortgages or interest-rate freezes for some subprime borrowers whose rates are due to rise over the next two years.

That left only two major banks -- Germany's Dresdner Bank, a unit of Allianz SE, and BMO Financial Group and its Bank of Montreal unit -- that hadn't yet moved to restructure their SIVs.

One reason for the plan's downfall was that it would only buy the highest-quality assets from the SIVs. That gave banks with SIVs less motivation to create a super-SIV, because the assets they most wanted to unload were those backed by more-troubled slices of mortgage debt.


Friday's closing was just inches from the main pivot and a breakout is imminent so is the year end rally.
Let's hope Santa will not leave behind a bumpy trail!http://cards.animatedfun.com/xmas/chimney.htm
MARKET WATCH:
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3) FRPT - 52wk Lowhttp://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001ZZQwE6EscEe0QUAXdchLLZpPNGwyH8TMF212qCjvRhpFpWushAY2xIUnVAjPzrcrqtLVf_m419g8sx9nTXqbUlNzwC8_Xiy2YIZNzgYfp9pmDf9VDpIF3qEXmQ6C2JZHgGUX9CJU_cROFy2rGmRxWg== Force Protection, Inc. and its subsidiaries engage in the manufacture of ballistic and blast protected vehicles.