标题:Proposed Wall St bailout to cost $700bn By FT reporters Published: September 20 2008 17:49 | Last updated: September 20 2008 17:49 The Bush administration sought congressional support Saturday for a $700bn bailout for US financial institutions to quell the turmoil in financial markets. The plan would allow the government to buy the bad debt of any US institution for the next two years, raising the legal ceiling on the national debt from $10.6 trillion to $11.3 trillion. President George W. Bush said: “We’re going to work with Congress to get a bill done quickly.” Treasury officials and members of Congress were meeting throughout the weekend to secure broad agreement on the package by the time world markets reopen on Monday. Legislation could pass early next week. Saying the administration was faced with preventing the collapse of a financial “house of cards”, Mr Bush said: “People are beginning to doubt our system, people were losing confidence and I understand it’s important to have confidence in our financial system.” he said. He said the risk of doing nothing far outweighed the risk of the package. He assured taxpayers that over time they would get a lot of their money back. At the height of the presidential election campaign, attention on the crisis has focused on demands that the rescue package should help not only Wall Street but also “Main Street” where ordinary Americans are already faced by foreclosures, job losses, and high food and energy prices. Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain are vying with each other to convince voters that their plans for the economy have the best chance of succeeding while protecting taxpayers. However, Nancy Pelosi, Democratic speaker of the House has assured the administration Mr Obama’s party is committed to “quick, bipartisan action”. Charles Schumer, New York Democratic senator, said on Saturday: “This is a good foundation of a plan that can stabilise markets quickly. But it includes no visible protection for taxpayers or homeowners. We look forward to talking to Treasury to see what, if anything, they have in mind in these two areas.” The plan is aimed at restoring confidence in the financial system by allowing US institutions to transfer their bad debt to the government. The draft legislation would authorize the Treasury to: “purchase, and to make and fund commitments to purchase, on such terms and conditions as determined by the Secretary, mortgage-related assets from any financial institution having its headquarters in the United States.” Henry Paulson, treasury secretary, who would be charged with executing the bailout plan, said: ”We must now take further, decisive action to fundamentally and comprehensively address the root cause of our financial system’s stresses. The federal government must implement a program to remove these illiquid assets that are weighing down our financial institutions and threatening our economy.” The action came after stock markets around the world roared their approval on Friday to news of plans for significant government action. Shanghai surged 9.5 per cent, in the biggest daily gain for seven years, to 2,075.091. Hong Kong ’s Hang Seng gained 9.6 per cent to 19,327.73, breaking a seven-day losing streak. In London the FTSE 100 had its biggest daily gain in its 24-year history, jumping 8.8 per cent, while in New York the S&P 500 closed up 4.0 per cent, having risen 4.3 per cent on Thursday. The rallies in London and the US were partially fuelled by bans on short-selling in financial stocks announced on Thursday night. The political negotiations on the rescue plan, which followed a week of unprecedented stress in global financial markets, envisage the most extensive peacetime expansion of the role of government in the financial system since the Great Depression and appeared to many to mark the end of an era of Reaganite deregulation. Hank Paulson, the US Treasury secretary, said the programme would initially cost “hundreds of billions of dollars.” But he added it was far cheaper than the alternative – “a continuing series of financial institution failures and frozen credit markets unable to fund economic expansion”. In addition, the Bush administration also announced a blanket guarantee on all money market mutual funds, in an effort to curtail a brewing crisis in the $3,500bn (€2,422bn) sector. The Federal Reserve announced new plans to support liquidity in the mutual fund sector. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0b03d81e-8730-11dd-93d9-0000779fd18c.html 新闻来源: (需有正确连结) -- --

※ 发信站: 批踢踢实业坊(ptt.cc) ◆ From: 220.129.161.144