U.S. to lay out plan to sop up bad mortgage assets
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will lay out a rescue plan on Tuesday that will rely on public and private funds to take $500 billion of bad assets off banks' books, sources said.
The plan would also extend a Federal Reserve program aimed at shoring up consumer lending to the troubled mortgage sector, allowing the U.S. central bank to extend up to $1 trillion in loans to holders of a wide variety of asset-backed securities, according to sources.
Details on Geithner's proposal for stabilizing a U.S. financial sector undermined by soaring losses on mortgage-related debts emerged following briefings Treasury officials provided for Capitol Hill lawmakers.
President Barack Obama told a news conference on Monday that cleaning up banks' balance sheets was a priority and didn't rule out the possibility that it will take more money than the $700 billion Congress already has approved to complete the job.
"We don't know yet whether we're going to need additional money or how much additional money we'll need until we see how successful we are at restoring a level of confidence in the marketplace," Obama said.
Clearly aware that shaky global financial markets are intently watching what steps Washington will take to right the world's largest economy, Obama called on Congress to speedily approve an economic stimulus package to complement the revamped bank-rescue proposals that Geithner was to unveil.
"If you delay acting on an economy of this severity, then you potentially create a negative spiral that becomes much more difficult for us to get out of," Obama said. "This is not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill recession, we are going through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."
Geithner will outline the Obama administration's plan to revamp a U.S. financial bailout program that his predecessor, Hank Paulson, persuaded Congress to approve last year. About half of that money has been committed to pump capital into banks and ailing U.S. automakers.
Before taking over Treasury, Geithner was president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and worked closely with Paulson on the prior administration's rescue effort but acknowledged it was inadequate and unpopular.
"The spectacle of huge amounts of taxpayer money being provided to the same institutions that helped cause the crisis, with limited transparency and oversight, added to public distrust," Geithner said in remarks prepared for delivery when the new measures are released.
He pledged banks will go through "a carefully designed comprehensive stress test" in future to make sure their balance sheets are clean and they meet requirements for capital.
Banks will continue to receive capital injections but they will have to meet tough new rules that require them to disclose how the money they receive is leading to more lending.
Geithner will also expand a joint Treasury-Fed program currently aimed at stimulating consumer and small business loans by allowing use of mortgage-backed securities and private label mortgage securities as collateral, sources said.
The program currently allows the Fed to lend up to $200 billion dollars to holders of top-rated securities backed by credit car, education, auto and small business loans. That program would be expanded to $1 trillion, sources familiar with the plan said.
Treasury also is expected to announce $50 billion aimed at stemming home foreclosures, several sources said. On Monday the director of the White House National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers, said on CNN more measures to help the battered housing sector will be coming within about two weeks.
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