The ammended version still consists of a $700bn made available to the Secretary of Treasury for buying out the troubled Mortgage backed Securities, however the package now also includes $100bn worth of tax breaks and increased government's guarantee on savings from $100,000 to $250,000.
- http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081003/wall_street.html
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7649822.stm
Only on monday the initial version of the rescue package has been declined by the House however later this week a slightly changed version of it has passed the Senate and now needs final approval by the House. Check out how the Senate and House of Representatives work - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrent_majority
It is now 6:30 Greenwich time and the House should be voting soon on the "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008", the expectations are very high and markets have been extremely volatile this week. FTSE-100 incrased by over 2% in the last trading hours and the Dow Jones is up by 2.80%
An open letter to the congressed endorsed by over 200 economists pointed out the pitfalls of the current rescue plans [see: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/economists-on-the-bailout/]
I am doubtfull the rescue package will pass, however there is a lot at stake for some high-profile characters and only a couple votes are needed to shift the cards around...
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