Treasury will not longer purchase
bad mortgages from banks after all.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson backed away from the long time
awaited plan and suggested that Treasury will inject more capital
into financial
institutions.
Now that government will not buy banks' bad mortgage
assets as originally planned further discouraged investors today as
Dow Jones moved again into negative territory in the third day of
decline.
Paulson said that the plan would have taken too much
time, and that the Treasury instead will rely on buying stakes in
banks and encouraging them to resume more normal lending.
There have been a lot of criticisms of banks receiving
injected capital as they were buying other smaller banks and sitting
on the rest of the cash, not lending. Lending guidelines has changed
and banks will stick with those guidelines until market improves and
since government is not purchasing bank's bad assets, they will not
lend any time soon.
However, Wall Street analysts generally believe that
the Treasury is now on the right path. In most cases banks need to
survive and deal with their own problems when it comes to bad
debt. With capital injections of funds from treasury banks can
expand their portfolios, sell and package deals that can be sold to
investors on Wall Street and than start lending.
With current, rather fast bailout plans announced
earlier concern is that bailout money of $700 is being depleted
quickly.
Paulson also announced a new goal for the program to
support financial markets that supply consumer credit in such areas
as credit card debt, auto loans and student loans. He said, "with a
stronger capital base, our banks will be more confident" to support
economic activity.
Treasury will now use the bailout money to buy
securities backed by credit card debt, student loans, auto loans,
housing and government agency debt. Paulson said that 40 percent of
U.S. consumer credit is provided through such securities.
The new plan calls for buying some of these
consumer-debt securities whenever the price fell far enough to push
the yield up to a certain level. If government likes the yield they
would buy those assets. These debt securities have a fixed interest
rate, so their yield changes according to whatever price investors
are willing to pay for them. Lower yields indicate stronger
demand.
With this plan the price of securities will go up and
yield would decline. Than the market for that security would
unfreeze and allow consumers to get mortgages, loans and credit
cards. With credit cards interest rates would decline.
Automakers are in a red zone and they need to turn
their wheels into positive results. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants
Congress to support a financial bailout for auto industry with $25
billion loan for General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.
Retailers such as Macy's announced loss of $44 million
in the third quote. American Express Co. is said to be seeking about
$3.5 billion from the government to help boost its balance
sheet.
Currently there is approximately $1.4 trillion, or
more than 10 percent of U.S. economic output in losses from credit
markets. As the economy weakens consumers concentrate more on
repaying debt that any other purchases.
New holiday spending projects some returns for
retailers. But with already slashed prices retailers can only push
so much.