The Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, officially reached the panic stage:
This is the culmination of the Federal Reserve's misguided attempts to manage the economy over the past decade. The irony of trying to protect the banking system by manipulating interest rates is that the Fed has cause large portions of the banking system to be on the brink of failure.Ben Bernanke on Tuesday called on banks to forgive chunks of mortgage loans issued to troubled borrowers, as the chairman of the Federal Reserve suggested the US housing crisis was far from over and required a “vigorous response”.
The remarks by Mr Bernanke contributed to a sharp fall in US shares in morning trading. They also underscored the extent to which policymakers are increasingly tilting towards more dramatic solutions to halt the cascade of home foreclosures, which is at the root of the US economic slowdown. [source]
See the litany in the column to the right...