Latest Henry Paulson Stories
The federal government must take "further, decisive action" to fix the cause of the U.S. financial system's crisis, the U.S. Treasury chief said Friday. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the government set up a temporary guarantee program for U.S. money market mutual funds. "The underlying weaknesses in our financial system today is illiquid mortgage assets that have lost value as the housing correction has proceeded," Paulson said. These bad mortgages are "choking off the flow of...
U.S. President George Bush outlined Friday a number of far-reaching and costly steps aimed at staunching a growing financial crisis. "We must act now to protect our nation's economic health from serious risk," Bush said. Bush said there would be "ample opportunity" to discuss the nexus of the crisis on Wall Street. "Now is the time to solve it," he said. Among the actions Bush outlined the Treasury Department's offering government insurance for money market mutual funds. "For every dollar...
By Patrick Rizzo, Jeannine Aversa and Martin Crutsinger Associated Press WASHINGTON -- The stock market finally found reason to rally Thursday, and Congress promised quick action as the Bush administration prepared a plan to rescue banks from the bad debt at the heart of the worst crisis on Wall Street since the Great Depression. Details of the plan were still being worked out, but Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson emerged from a nighttime meeting on Capitol Hill to say he hoped to have a...
By Ellen Simon NEW YORK - The Federal Reserve forged an extraordinary $85 billion rescue Tuesday night of insurance giant American International Group Inc., offering a respite from two days of chaos in the American financial system. The move came hours after the Fed resisted a cut in interest rates to buoy Wall Street, which staged a slight rebound anyway from Monday's biggest point drop in the Dow Jones industrials since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Investors had feared that a failure of...
The U.S. economy presents a "very mixed picture right now," but is strong enough to overcome the latest crisis, a White House spokeswoman said Wednesday. "From what I understand from the experts," Press Secretary Dana Perino said, "our economy has the strength to deal with these shots." Bush's economic advisers did not guarantee that the multibillion dollar loan to insurance giant AIG would be the last bailout, she said. When asked why the federal government would assist "any company"...
WASHINGTON [AP] -- In a bid to save financial markets and economy from further turmoil, the U.S. government agreed Tuesday to provide an $85 billion emergency loan to rescue the huge insurer AIG. The Federal Reserve said in a statement it determined that a disorderly failure of AIG could hurt the already delicate financial markets and the economy. It also could "lead to substantially higher borrowing costs, reduced household wealth and materially weaker economic performance," the Fed said....
By Ellen Simon Associated Press NEW YORK -- The Federal Reserve forged an extraordinary $85 billion rescue Tuesday night of insurance giant American International Group Inc., offering a respite from two days of chaos in the American financial system. The move came hours after the Fed resisted a cut in interest rates to buoy Wall Street, which staged a slight rebound anyway from Monday's biggest point drop in the Dow Jones industrials since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Investors had feared...
By Sue Kirchhoff, Kathy Chu, Barbara Hagenbaugh and Edward Iwata The Federal Reserve said Tuesday night it will lend up to $85 billion to American International Group, effectively putting the government in control of the flailing insurance giant, saying the move was necessary to protect the financial system and the economy. The action averts a bankruptcy filing by AIG, which has been struggling to raise capital after crippling losses on insurance policies sold to investors in...
British bank Barclays said Monday it was talking with Lehman Brothers about buying some of the firm's core business assets. Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday in a historic day on Wall Street that included Merrill Lynch accepting a rescue offer from Bank of America. U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson Jr., set up talks between Barclays and Lehman Brothers over the weekend but Barclays backed away after learning the U.S. government wasn't interested in...
By Martin Crutsinger Associated Press WASHINGTON -- The Federal Reserve announced late Sunday several steps to cope with the worst credit crisis in decades, including broadening the types of assets that investment banks can put up to get emergency loans from the Fed. The action came as U.S. and foreign commercial banks were hashing out a plan to inoculate the global financial system against the possible failure of Lehman Brothers. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced the...
