Recession’s Grip Forces U.S. to Flood World With More Dollars

Bloomberg.com: Exclusive: "Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The world needs more dollars. The United States is preparing to provide them.

In an all-out assault on capitalism’s worst crisis since the Great Depression, the U.S. is taking on the role of both lender and borrower of last resort for the global economy.

The Federal Reserve, which has already pumped out hundreds of billions of dollars, might formally adopt a policy of flooding the world financial system with even more money. The Treasury, on course to borrow some $1.5 trillion this fiscal year, may tap global capital markets for even more to finance a fiscal stimulus package of as much as $700 billion and provide additional bailout money for banks.

“You want to do everything you can when you’re facing the threat of a deflationary breakdown of the economy,” says Michael Feroli, a former Fed official who is now an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York."

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Bloomberg.com: Economy

Bloomberg.com: Economy: "The Treasury's stock buying program will begin with nine banks, which it didn't name. People briefed on the matter said $125 billion will be disbursed in days: Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and a combined Bank of America Corp./Merrill Lynch & Co. each will get $25 billion, while Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will get $10 billion each. Bank of New York Mellon Corp. said it will receive about $3 billion and State Street Corp. said it's getting $2 billion."

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Bloomberg.com: Exclusive

Bloomberg.com: Exclusive: "Banks for McClatchy, owner of the Miami Herald, demanded as much as 2.25 percentage points more in annual interest to relax the publisher's lending agreements, the Sacramento, California- based company said in a Sept. 30 regulatory filing. McClatchy was paying an interest margin of 1.25 percentage points at the start of the year. San Francisco-based construction-supplier Building Materials agreed last week to pay an extra 3.5 percentage points on $340 million of loans after its earnings fell below targets, according to a Sept. 30 filing.

``We're in a credit crunch and getting those covenants amended will be lot more painful,'' said Andrew Feltus, who oversees $8 billion in high-yield debt at Pioneer Investment Management Co. Inc. in Boston.

Debt rated below Baa3 by Moody's and less than BBB- at S&P is considered junk, or in the case of loans, leveraged. Loans are typically made by banks such as Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., which then sell pieces to mutual funds, hedge funds and other institutional investors.

The market for leveraged loans ballooned as banks arranged $956 billion of the debt in the first half of 2007, compared with $549 billion in 2005 as banks raced to finance the record amount of buyouts. The market ground to a halt a year ago as the subprime mortgage contagion spread, making investors"

Bloomberg.com: Exclusive

Bloomberg.com: Exclusive: "Lehman Cash Crunch Caused by Lender JPMorgan, Creditors Say

Creditors say that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s main lender and clearing agent, JPMorgan Chase & Co., caused the liquidity crisis that led to Lehman's collapse".

JPMorgan had more than $17 billion of Lehman's cash and securities three days before the investment bank filed the biggest bankruptcy in history on Sept. 15, the creditors committee said in a filing Oct. 2 in bankruptcy court in Manhattan. Denying Lehman access to the assets on Sept. 12, the bank ``froze'' Lehman's account, the creditors claimed.

JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank by deposits, financed Lehman's brokerage operations with daily advances, while money market funds and other short-term lenders provided overnight loans, according to bankruptcy court documents. When JPMorgan shut Lehman off from funds, Lehman ``suffered an immediate liquidity crisis that could have been averted by any number of events, none of which transpired,'' according to the filing.

The creditors asked the judge in charge of the case to let them interview a witness and request relevant documents from JPMorgan and to pursue possible legal claims. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James M. Peck is scheduled to hold a hearing Oct. 16 on that request, the creditors said.

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Bloomberg.com: Exclusive

Bloomberg.com: Exclusive: "Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- When Sheila Bair took over as head of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in 2006, the agency was probably better known for the ``FDIC'' logo on the doors of the nation's banks than for anything it did.

Now Bair is at the center of the financial crisis, speeding the takeover of failing banks and pressing the mortgage industry to ease loan terms. And she's vaulted from the leadership of a once-sleepy regulator into the league of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, winning praise from Democrats and Republicans.

``She has more power because of the situation on the ground,'' said Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat. ``No one is going to put handcuffs on her.''

``She's going to be Treasury secretary someday,'' said Tim Adams, a former department undersecretary under President George W. Bush who worked with Bair when she was an assistant secretary.

In just the last week, Bair, 54, invoked never-before-used authority to avert a financial-system breakdown by brokering a deal for Citigroup Inc.'s to buy Wachovia Corp.'s banking operations. She seized Washington Mutual Inc. and sold it to JPMorgan Chase & Co. and convinced the Senate to temporarily increase the FDIC's insurance of individual bank deposits -- a move Paulson opposed."

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