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Thursday, October 02, 2008

Credit Stress

by Calculated Risk on 10/02/2008 02:03:00 PM

"The credit window is closed."
Jim Press, president of Chrysler LLC
The TED spread is at a record 3.62.

And from Bloomberg: Libor Soars, Commercial Paper Slumps as Credit Freeze Deepens
The Libor- OIS spread, the difference between the three-month dollar rate and the overnight indexed swap rate, widened to a record 260 basis points today. It was 197 basis points a week ago and 79 basis points a month ago.
...
The market for commercial paper plummeted $94.9 billion to $1.6 trillion for the week ended Oct. 1 as banks and insurers were unable to find buyers for the short-term debt ...
The NY Times quoted Chairman Bernanke as saying on Friday, Sept 19th:
"If we don’t do this, we may not have an economy on Monday."
Well, we still have an economy, but it is clearly in tatters ...