Fear On Wall
Street let's Dow plunge more than
600 points
No
matter where you look today, money are problem. Investors do not
want to invest due to risk of volatility and sellers are everywhere.
Fear is still spreading on Wall Street and seems like it is not
going away any time soon. Just today, major credit ratings agency
said it was considering cutting its rating on General Motors Corp.
Sell off came after S&P Ratings Services put GM and its finance
affiliate GMAC LLC under review to see if its rating should be cut.
Just few weeks back GM received 25 billion bailout
from government as GM was headed for bankruptcy. GM posted
$15.5 billion net loss and announced plans to cut cost by $10
billion. J.D. Power and Associates and Global Insight lower auto
sector expectations for 2008 and predict a slow recovery.
Government has responded again with news of buying
stakes in banks. With this Treasury will able to inject capital
directly to each bank in exchange for a stake in a bank. Under $700
billion plan Treasury Department would get common or preferred
shares from the bank.
With this injection directly to banks would allow
banks to loan money and open up and unfreeze their credit lines as
well. The rescue plan of $700 billion allows the Treasury to put
cash directly into banks, however; there was not much news lately
about this. On the other hand this would allow banks to earn
interest when banks recover.
Treasury Department is able to negotiate both deals,
buy out all bad mortgages as well as inject direct capital into
banks. Even if Treasury injects small percentage into US banks, it
will most likely have positive effect on the market. But there is no
guarantee that even if banks receive injected capital if they will
lend again.
If new capital is given to the banks in most cases
government guarantees the debt the bank has. So banks can pay-off
existing debt-holders. This will not make new loans if banks have
too much debt.
Treasury has to make a new stipulation in a plan that
all new injected capital will be only used to make new loans, not to
allow banks payoff existing debt so small and mid-sized companies
can continue operations and keeps economy going by buying
products/services, hiring people and most important borrowing
capital from banks.
A wave of fear is still in stock market and bad credit
market let's investors sell rather than buy. Even Fed stepped in and
lowered its key interest rate to help unfreeze credit markets. With
lowered rate cut, this supposed to be a boost to investors; however,
market responded opposite way. For homeowners that mean HELOC, ARM
loans would be lower. If you receive interest rate reduction on your
credit cards make sure you do not carry too big balance, otherwise;
your low interest rate may change to higher. Keep your credit limit
under 30% of your limit.
In Iceland, government took over all three major banks
as it continues to get worse. New emergency powers were enacted to
allow government to create a new bank that will take over domestic
operations of another one of its collapsed banks. The decision
should allow economy in Iceland to return to its normal operations.
Most investors were considering if the plan of
injecting capital directly to banks will work, and if so what the
effect will have on economy.