These are very interesting times… At this point in time, after passing up some deals which could have saved AIG, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw at least part if not all of AIG being bought at bargain basement prices by one of its major competitors. I think it will be tough for them to find financing any other way, especially after the recent downgrades. However, I haven’t been following the industry too carefully, so it would be tough for me to speculate on an appropriate suitor (list could include ING, Allianz, AXA, etc…). Nonetheless, I am rather glad I haven’t taken on any new long positions in the sector recently. Something else we should all be paying close attention to is the effect these failures have on the CDS market, this could open up a whole new bag of worms. I recently read an article which stated that PIMCO alone currently guarantees USD760mn of AIG debt.

As for the Fed, I would be surprised, but not shocked, if we saw the Fed move 50bps today, however they will almost certainly switch to an easing bias in the statement and very likely modify and extend some of the current lending schemes (i.e. changes to the discount window and/or TAF, accepting more assets as collateral, possibly even allowing the Fed funds rate to trade well below target over the next couple of weeks, etc…). I don’t really believe a rate cut would be the right course of action, liquidity is the issue not price. However, psychologically it may help the market. All in all the Fed’s announcement will likely bring some calm to the market, which could easily be undone by an AIG collapse. We will all get a much better idea within the next 24 hours, as it has been reported an AIG deal would need to be completed by Wednesday. Currently, I am staying on the sidelines, but monitoring the situation closely. Finally, I did notice that the financial sector ultrashort ETF is trading nowhere near its July highs, which I found somewhat interesting. I am not very familiar with this fund, so if anyone has some insight on this please feel free to email me.

As an aside, and as I mentioned was a possibility in my previous post, China has begun easing monetary policy. This could be an important factor once the market does start recovering. Many of China’s issues were self-inflicted and reversing policy could have a big impact as investors (eventually) become a bit less risk adverse.

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