Bloomberg - The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are considering a program that may offer about $500 billion in guarantees for troubled mortgages to stem record foreclosures, people familiar with the matter said.
The plan, which might put as many as 3 million homeowners into affordable loans, would require lenders to restructure mortgages […]

New York (HedgeCo.Net) - SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said he was all for a merger between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Hopping on board with U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, this was the first time Cox has publically supported a merger that was first brought to the table years ago.  […]

Gotham Gazette - The turbulent financial market events of recent days demonstrably signal the end of Wall Street as we know it. More uncertainty lies ahead, on Wall Street but also for the national economy. How is this affecting New York and what will it take to get the economy moving again?
Six months ago, a […]

Reuters UK - "Does anyone know what is happening with the markets?" former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers asked after stepping out of his car and into a hedge fund industry conference in Connecticut on Tuesday.
And he wasn’t the only one wondering.
As Summers, now a managing director at hedge fund DE Shaw, and hundreds of […]

Los Angeles Times - Big Wall Street investment banks have designed and marketed schemes enabling non-U.S. taxpayers, including offshore hedge funds, to evade millions of dollars in taxes each year on U.S. stock dividends, Senate investigators have found.
Some banks have been crafting for more than 10 years transactions designed to enable their foreign clients to […]

New York (HedgeCo.Net) - The recent controversial moves of Henry Paulson and the U.S. Treasury have Washington divided not only on the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but on government’s new role in the U.S. mortgage market.   
On Monday, Paulson and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart placed the two mortgage giants […]

New York (HedgeCo.Net) - While the U.S. Treasury has done all it can to stave off rumors of a government bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , some say the inevitable rescue is bound to take place after attempts to raise capital for the two mortgage giants have proved futile.
Preferred shares […]

San Francisco Chronicle- The giant housing rescue plan President Bush signed Wednesday might help stanch the bleeding in the housing market, but experts on both sides of the political divide worry that it is, at best, only an emergency step.
In addition to $300 billion in government guarantees to aid homeowners threatened by foreclosure, the administration […]

Reuters UK- A near one year-old credit crunch still has plenty of venom and will sting global financial markets and the economy well into next year or even into 2010, a Reuters poll found.
On the eve of its one-year anniversary at the start of August the credit crisis is still spitting out victims and darkening […]

FINalternatives- It’s not the first time “hedge fund” has been used as an epithet, but a former U.S. Treasury chief is using the H.F. words to describe mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The two firms, into which Treasury said yesterday it will inject billions of dollars in loans and investments, have been “arbitraging their […]

West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net)- The Hang Seng Index posted its biggest single-day loss in a month, as investors fretted about the recurring subprime credit crisis in the United States and its impact on regional banks and other financials.
"It’s a very bad day for financial markets across Asia. What’s happening to Fannie Mae and Freddie […]

New York (HedgeCo.Net) - Mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may get some help from the Fed in hopes of staving off a market implosion following a crippling credit crunch and a period of great stress in the financial markets.
"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play a central role in our housing finance system and […]