All Posts Tagged With: "Federal Reserve Bank"

Stock action on Wall Street was mostly directionless. Stocks have opened lower here in Australia. But all the juicy action is in the bond market, where the Fed is getting its hands dirty again. You wouldn’t think the Fed would have to come in and support bond prices with investors wringing their hands about global growth. But the numbers tell another story.

Bear Stearns was on the receiving end of an indirect loan from the Federal Reserve on Friday. Though Bear is the fifth-largest securities firm in the U.S. (and the ninth largest bank in the world), it’s an investment bank, not a commercial lender. The Fed can’t loan directly to investment banks, so the loan had to be routed through a willing third-party, in this case JP Morgan. It turns out that last week’s big US$200 billion loan facility was probably set up to make this three-way transaction possible.