Portsmouth Herald News – The Federal Reserve resisted a cut in interest rates Tuesday and then forged a plan to take over American International Group Inc. and rescue the insurance giant from the brink of bankruptcy with an extraordinary $85 billion loan.
The moves, along with a slight rebound on Wall Street, offered some respite after the chaos that shook the financial system Monday when investment house Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and the Dow Jones industrials suffered its biggest point drop since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Investors worried that a failure by AIG, the world’s largest insurer, would set off even more financial turmoil.
The Federal Reserve said in a statement it determined that a disorderly failure of AIG could hurt the already delicate financial markets and the economy.
It also could "lead to substantially higher borrowing costs, reduced household wealth and materially weaker economic performance," the Fed said.
"The president supports the agreement announced this evening by the Federal Reserve," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. "These steps are taken in the interest of promoting stability in financial markets and limiting damage to the broader economy."
