NY Post - Markets were 500 trades from a meltdown. Had the Fed and Treasury not quickly stepped into the fray that morning with a quick $105 billion injection of liquidity, the Dow Jones Index could have collapsed to the 8,300-level - a 22 percent decline!
According to traders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, money market funds were inundated with $500 billion in sell orders prior to the opening.
The Fed's dramatic $105 billion liquidity injection on Thursday (pre-market) was just enough to keep key institutional accounts from following through on the sell orders and starting a stampede of cash that could have brought large tracts of the US economy to a halt.
The Fed's dramatic $105 billion liquidity injection on Thursday (pre-market) was just enough to keep key institutional accounts from following through on the sell orders and starting a stampede of cash that could have brought large tracts of the US economy to a halt.
Bloomberg - Goldman, Morgan Stanley Bring Down Curtain on an Era
The Wall Street that shaped the financial world for two decades ended last night, when Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley concluded there is no future in remaining investment banks now that investors have determined the model is broken.
The Federal Reserve's approval of their bid to become banks ends the ascendancy of the securities firms, 75 years after Congress separated them from deposit-taking lenders, and caps weeks of chaos that sent Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. into bankruptcy and led to the rushed sale of Merrill Lynch & Co. to Bank of America Corp.
The announcement paves the way for the two New York-based firms, both of which will now be regulated by the Fed, to build their deposit base, potentially through acquisitions. That will allow them to rely more heavily on deposits from retail customers instead of using money borrowed in the bond market -- the leverage that led to the undoing of Bear Stearns and Lehman.