From Blomberg…..

The ruble-denominated Micex Stock Exchange suspended trading indefinitely at 12:10 p.m. after its index erased a 7.6 percent gain and plunged as much as 10 percent within an hour. The benchmark fell 17 percent yesterday, the biggest drop since Bloomberg started tracking the gauge in May 2001. The dollar- denominated RTS halted trading after similar declines.

The government yesterday injected $20 billion into the interbank lending market via central bank and Finance Ministry auctions in a bid to contain soaring borrowing rates as credit dried up in the wake of the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. bankruptcy. The one-day MosPrime overnight rate, a gauge for monitoring liquidity demand, leapt 25 basis points to a record 11.08 percent today.

The Finance Ministry attempted to stop the selloff by offering 1.13 trillion rubles ($44 billion) of budget funds to the country’s three biggest banks, OAO Sberbank, VTB Group and OAO Gazprombank, for at least three months. That measure came as KIT Finance, a Russian brokerage, said it’s in talks to find a buyer after failing to meet some financial obligations related to repurchase agreements.

Bond Market `Closed’

“The bond market remains effectively closed and banks are reluctant to lend to one another,” said Julian Rimmer, head of sales trading at UralSib Financial Corp. in London. “The problems experienced by KIT Finance have heightened counterparty risk and reduced liquidity further.”

From Brad Setser….

The 3 month Treasury bill now yields nothing. The Treasury though will give you your money back …

The fall in Treasury yields came even as the US government indicated that it was going to issue a lot of bills and bonds to help the Fed grow its balance sheet.

When Brad Seter says the 3 month Treasury now yields nothing he really means less then nothing. If you adjusted inflation short term treasury bills have not had a real yield for a while. But now you might as well stick the money under your mattress rather then loan it to the Feds.

But the real story is in the last line. To say that the Fed is going to grow its balance sheet is just another way of saying that it is going to print money. The Naked Capitalist has more.

From Reuters…

The Federal Reserve is negotiating a $85-90 billion secured bridge loan for American International Group Inc., according to a report on CNBC.

Shareholders would be severely diluted by the bailout that involves the bridge loan. The government would receive AIG warrants for most of its equity in the bailout being negotiated. CNBC said the deal would give AIG incentive to sell its assets quickly to help pay off the bridge loan.

Edit: Its going to happen.

From the Financial Times…

Interbank money market rates climbed to 11 per cent, their highest since a mini-banking crisis in summer 2004.

Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Uralsib investment bank: “We’re in completely uncharted territory where the prevailing emotion is of fear and numbnes. No one knows where this could stop”.

Alexei Kudrin, finance minister, insisted that the financial system was not in a systemic crisis but the central bank injected a record $14.16bn in one-day funds into the money market.

The finance ministry also placed an additional R150bn ($5.8bn) in one-month deposits into the banking system. Konstantin Korishchenko, central bank deputy, told Russian news agencies that the bank and the finance ministry could provide a total of $117.6bn in liquidity to the banking sector.

But market players said banks were ceasing to lend to second and third-tier companies and brokers were pulling credit lines. KIT Finance, big Moscow investment house confirmed rumours that it had been unable to make payment on a series of short-term loans.

From Brad Setser…..

UPDATE: John Jansen reports Morgan Stanley’s credit spread has widened significantly and LIBOR is way way up. LIBOR may now be the rate that banks don’t lend to each other at, but the banks do need funding.

UPDATE 2: AIG’s bonds are also trading at Argentina-in-default levels, 33 cents on the dollar.

UPDATE 3: The New York Times suggests that if AIG doesn’t get federal money, it will fail on Wednesday. That is a stark choice: a two day no bailout policy, or the second failure of a large financial institution in a week.

From Naked Capitalism…

The numbers and the measures become more and more extreme. For AIG to get permission from regulators to move $20 billion in capital from its subs to the holding company and have significant asset disposals teed up wasn’t sufficient to shore up the embattled insurer., The Fed has reportedly convened yet another emergency session to see if the usual suspects might be able to somehow aid the embattled insurer. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Fed has leaned on Goldman and JP Morgan for an emergency $70-$75 billion loan as well.

From The Deal Breaker (H/T Marginal Revolution) ….

$$$ Bank of America is buying Merrill, the WSJ reports. The deal values the company at $44 billion, or $29 per share, a significant premium from Friday’s market price. Everyone is perplexed by the premium. But if it is, as some have reported, an all stock deal and BofA shares take a significant hit in the wake of the news, the final price and the premium could be much lower.

Update: CNBC’s Charlie Gasparino says the government forced Merrill to sell itself.

$$$ On CNBC they are saying that AIG has asked the Federal Reserve for some kind of emergency bridge loans. Can the Fed lend to an insurance company?

$$$ Federal Reserve is dramatically expanding its emergency lending program. It’s now going to take all sorts of collateral, including equity.

From the Oil Drum….

Where is our gasoline and diesel supply headed? Even before Ike hit, quite a few areas of the US were starting to see gasoline shortages. The impact of Ike can only make shortages worse. Most likely, it will take refineries at least a week or two to get production back to normal levels after a storm of this type, considering the impacts of electrical outages and flooding. In this article, I will examine some of the issues that seem to be involved. Based on my analysis, fuel supply shortages are likely to last well into October, and are likely to get considerably worse before they get better.

It’s to early to be sure what the effects are going to be yet. But the south is already seeing shortages. As this piece from the AP says….

Fears of supply shortages, and actual fuel-production disruptions, resulting from Ike’s lashing of vital energy infrastructure led to pump price disparities of as much as $1 a gallon in some states, and even on some blocks.

Late Saturday the U.S. Minerals Management Service said there were two confirmed reports of drilling rigs adrift in the central Gulf of Mexico.

Compounding the jitters and higher costs for gasoline retailers was the fact that some big refineries along the Gulf Coast had been shut for nearly two weeks following Hurricane Gustav. Power outages caused by Ike threatened to keep millions of gallons of gasoline output idled for at least several days.

The price of regular gasoline soared as high as $4.99 a gallon in Knoxville, Tenn. on Saturday, up from $3.66 a day earlier.

In Florida, the attorney general’s office reported prices as high as $5.50 a gallon in Tallahassee and said it had received 186 gouging complaints.

This article from the Houston Chronicle suggest that things may be better then the Oil Drum fears.

I was going to write a post that laid out the size of the big banks that are rumored to be nearing death. But Nemo beat me to it.