|
CNBC'S MOST SHARED
- Second Half: Wait For Pullbacks, Then Buy the Best
- Discover Shares Fall on Word of Stock Offering
- California General Obligation Bond Rating Cut
- GM to Get Final $20 Billlion From US This Year
- Goldman Sees No Harm From Computer Programmer
- World Trade Center Developer Threatens Arbitration
- The Weirdest Currencies on Earth
- Judge Gives Control of Jackson Estate to Executors
- Recession Special: Wine Cheaper Than Water!
- March Lows Will Hold — So Buy Equities: Strategists
- Lacoste Runs Full Page Ad With Roddick Loss
- Brandt: Bing, The Little Search Engine That Couldn't
- 5-Star Manager's 5 Top Stocks
- Hey, What's Up Doc?
- Busch: Summertime Blues Hits Investors
- Chadwick: Recession and Scandals Pave the Way for Romney 2012
- Art Cashin: The S&P's 'Head and Shoulders' Number
- Michael Jackson: Death And Taxes
Major banks have abandoned plans to set up a bailout fund for subprime-related debt, mainly because not enough banks were willing to participate.
The planned fund, which was proposed in October by top U.S. banks--including Citigroup [C
Loading...
()
], Bank of America [BAC
Loading...
()
] and JPMorgan Chase [JPM
Loading...
()
]--was intended to buy the assets of ailing so-called "Structured Investment Vehicles" in order to prevent a fire sale of billions of dollars worth of shaky debt.
But a source close to the situation told CNBC that the fund is being dropped because of a lack of interest from banks in contributing to the fund and a lack of high quality assets that these SIVS were willing to sell. Many banks also are taking these SIVs on their books, making a bailout fund less necessary.
SIVs are off-balance-sheet funds used by banks to buy high-yielding assets like U.S. mortgages. They have run into trouble this year because of the meltdown in the subprime mortgage market, which has slashed the value of the debt securities held by SIVs.
Early estimates had put the bailout fund at as much as $100 billion, but that amount had dwindled to about $30 billion earlier this month.









