..... the big question is: Will it actually help?
The answer, some analysts and big investors say, is probably not much. The backup fund will not save troubled structured investment vehicles, or SIVs, that hold billions of dollars in packaged loans, though it could delay their demise. It may help calm the turbulent credit markets by preventing a sharp sell-off of securities, though analysts say the fund will probably not be able to offset the deteriorating prices of the securities.
Banks, meanwhile, may benefit if the backup fund can reignite trading in the packaged loan market and keep SIV assets from bogging down their own balance sheets.
“It is quickly being realized that it doesn’t really solve the problems,” said Joshua Rosner, a managing director at the research firm Graham Fisher & Company who had been skeptical of the proposal. “The path they have taken of skimming off the cream from the top doesn’t resolve the fact there is poison at the bottom.”
The backup fund will not help troubled structured investment vehicles survive. Nor is it intended to do so. Rather, it is meant to help set a market price for the securities they hold.........the backup fund may not cushion the blows as much as originally thought.
For one, the credit markets have worsened since the proposal was set in motion with the assistance of the Treasury Department in September. And some of the technical details of the way the backup fund is to be structured could limit its impact.
First, the three banks have committed to put up only around $5 billion to $10 billion each, leaving the remaining portion of the $75 billion to be funded by other financial institutions, according to a person involved with the plan. The 30 or so remaining SIVs have about $250 billion in assets they need to unload in the coming months. That suggests the backup fund will not be a meaningful purchaser of last resort, even if it wanted to.
Where the backup fund may have an impact is in stabilizing the financial markets, though only to a point.Markets tend to overshoot. The big fear is that SIVs would be forced to dump their holdings all at once in order to pay back investors, causing prices to collapse. That could wipe out both investors who bought the riskiest slices of SIV debt as well as risk-averse money market investors who hold its commercial paper.
By encouraging SIV note holders to extend their notes by assuring them of a ready buyer, the backup fund could buy SIVs a few months of extra time.
The hope is that the backup fund will allow time for asset prices to recover.......
www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/business/...21784d1ccbde&ei=5087%0A