A group of the biggest U.S. banks are ready today to roll out a $100 billion bailout plan to jump-start the wrecked credit mar- ket – but it could trigger new rifts in the financial fraternity.
After a weekend marathon of prodding by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America plan to unveil a rescue vehicle that will cart off the unwanted junk mortgages clogging up credit markets and wiping out billions in profits at Wall Street banks and elsewhere.
Some investors believe the move – slated to be announced prior to the opening of markets – was necessary to prevent further damage to the economy here and abroad, The Times of London reported.
The rescue – almost 20 years to the day from the Street’s Black Monday of Oct. 19, 1987 – is expected to involve a commitment to set up a $100 billion pool to buy risky mortgage securities and prevent their wholesale dumping.
“Treasury and the banks are showing they’re willing to deal with this directly,” said Tony Crescenzi, chief bond-market strategist at Miller Tabak in New York. “They’re taking nothing for granted. This will help to deaden the speculative forces.”
Such unity, though, doesn’t appear to extend to investment banks, which are taking a back seat to Citi & Co. – the rescue leaders who have exclusive access to the Federal Reserve’s discount window of cheap emergency cash.
That doesn’t sit well with the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns. Insiders told The Post these back-seat banks are unhappy about the disadvantage because they’re being asked to take on the riskiest parts of the rescue – the so-called “mezzanine” tranches.
These firms are expected to hold out for extra compensation to take on the added risk, banking sources said.
The bailout comes amid fears that the credit crunch is getting worse and threatens to eliminate all credit possibilities for people who aren’t solidly middle class or above, dragging down the economy more than forecast, insiders said.
Banks face the danger of liquidating hundreds of billions of weak mortgage securities on the open market at steep discounts, triggering a likely and immediate collapse of that market.
The rescue amounts to the biggest bailout on Wall Street since 1998 when Alan Greenspan, ex-head of the Fed, pushed seven investment banks to prevent the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management from collapsing and taking a big part of the economy’s plumbing along with it.
The shaky mortgages have been carried in separate entities called structured investment vehicles (SIVs), which are affiliated with various banks but generally kept off the books unless they seize up.
The SIV entities were borrowing money in the short-term market at lower rates and plowing it into higher-yielding mortgage securities for a profit. The system fell apart when homeowners began defaulting on mortgages in record numbers, wrecking the SIVs’ cash flows used to repay pension funds, mutual funds and other investors.
Citigroup has most at stake, with about $100 billion in seven SIVs, or one-quarter of the world’s SIV assets.
Insiders said the new fund, dubbed Master-Liquid Enhancement Conduit (M-LEC), would give banks a temporary clean slate and a timeout from the crunch.
Questions lingered, however, about how the fund would resolve troubled mortgages, how profits will be shared, how the acquired paper would be priced and how long the rescue project would cleanse tainted paper from ledger sheets of banks.
Insiders said Paulson had reached out to other banks, including HSBC and Barclays, to have them throw in with the pool.