The U.S. government is preparing to mop up hundreds of billions of dollars in bad mortgage debt, after curbing short-selling and guaranteeing mutual funds in an effort to stabilise financial markets.
The moves cap a week in which financial markets faced their most serious confluence of crises since the Great Depression in the 1930s and threatened national economies and the worldwide banking system.
"It's like having a heart attack, and you go and get your chest cracked open and get it fixed, but the next morning you're still hurting," said Warren Simpson, managing director at Stephens Capital Management in Little Rock, Arkansas. "This has been a beast of biblical proportions. Nobody has seen anything like it."
