Existing home sales to Rise United States, fail to recover lost ground

April 20, 2011, 12: 56 pm EDT by Timothy r. Homan

April 20 (Bloomberg)--sales of the United States previously belonged homes rose in March as a supply of properties in or near foreclosure mounting attracted investors.

Purchases have increased by 3.7% to an annual rate of $ 5.1 million, exceeding the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News 5 million, figures from the National Association of Realtors showed today in Washington. All-cash deals accounted for 35% of transactions, the most on record, the group said.Unemployment, the collapse of the values of property and stricter lending rules may push the number of households losing their homes at a record level this year, a sign the market will take time to recover. Even with last month's gains, housing can remain a small component in the economic recovery which began in June 2009. "" We continue to water along the bottom, just tread ", said John Herrmann, a senior strategist for fixed income at State Street Global markets LLC in Boston. "The housing market is quite depressed." We believe that real estate will fall further. "Stocks climbed that companies Intel Corp. at Yahoo! Inc. sales exceeded estimates and the producers of acquired products. The Standard & Poor 500 Index increased by 1.3% to 1,329.69 at 12: 37 in New York.Estimates for March existing sales ranged from 4.59 to 5.4 million, according to the median of 74 forecasts in the Bloomberg survey.Pay CashThe for all cash transactions share is highest since monthly monitoring in August 2008, Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist at the association of Realtors, said at a press conference today in Washington. Annual figures before 2008 showed to approximately 10 per cent share, said seized property Yun.Les, which include foreclosures and short sales, accounted for 40% of all transactions last month, according to Yun. Purchases by investors climbed to 22% of transactions last month from 19% in February. "This is part of the cleaning process needs to occur,"Yun said, referring to sales in distress." "Home sales are strongest in the very low price range" of less than $100,000, he said, reflecting the increase in demand by investors pay cash.Sales increased in three of the four regions of the United States in March, led by a gain of 8.2% in the South. The West dropped by 0.8%.The average sale price fell 5.9% in March 2010 to $due last month as lower priced properties became a greater share of the market. Sales of homes at a price of $100,000 or less increased by 9.6% in March 2010, compared with a decrease of 6.3% for the market as a whole, the report shows.More SupplyThe number of houses formerly owned for sale climbed to 3.55 million. At the present rate of sale should be 8.4 months to sell these homes compared with 8.5 end of the previous month. Supply in the eight months to nine months beach is compatible with price stability, the group said.Officials of the Federal Reserve, in a statement following their meeting on monetary policy on 15 March, said then that the "economic recovery is on a more equal footing," real estate residential is always "pressed". The Committee of the Central Bank is expected to respond to the next, 26-27 April Washington.Home price has dropped in the 12 months to January by the most in more than a year, the index S & P/Case-Shiller of the values of the House. In 20 cities, prices declined by 3.1%, the largest decline since December 2009, the group said the underlying values of affairs for March 29 ForeclosuresSome are less than the mortgages on the properties. CoreLogic Inc. last month found that approximately 1.8 million households was delinquent or in foreclosure, a set of "shadow inventory" supposedly to add to the 3.5 million existing homes already on the market.Houses cheaper and goods seized are pessimistic constructors. Global builders are not optimistic. Tomb of the National Association of Home Builders confidence ' to 16 this month, according to the tonnage of the Group has published this week. A reading below 50 means a majority of manufacturers view as poor conditions."Home KB, builders based in Los Angeles that targets buyers from the first time, this month reported a loss greater than expected for the quarter ended February 28 as orders plunged".We do not provide a net benefit for 2011, "Director General Jeffrey Mezger said during a conference call with analysts on 5 April." "The economy continues to improve." Despite this, the recovery has yet to include the significant growth of employment and overflowed housing. ?

-Editors: Carlos Torres, James Tyson

To contact the reporter on this story: Timothy r. Homan in Washington to thoman1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Wellisz to the cwellisz@bloomberg.net

View the original article here

Tornadoes pounding through the waves States

SPC. Scott Dawson tries to remove the licence plate of his car which was destroyed in a tornado in Fayetteville, N.C., James Robison/Associated PRess)

Thunderstorms battered part of the thorax of the nation Tuesday, toppling trees on houses in Arkansas and blowing car tracks in Illinois.

But contrary to the tornadoes, and straight-line winds that killed at least 46 people in six States less than a week ago, there was any immediate injury report as the last combat storm crushed portions of the South and the Midwest.

Officials Wednesday morning were investigating 32 separate reports of tornadoes across a number of American States.

In the Pulaski County of central Arkansas, where a tornado killed a mother and her son last week in Little Rock, emergency officials said that the storms had not made any victims by late Tuesday night.

"We were yet to recover from the storms of the last week, therefore if it is the fact that, then, Yes, it is quite a relief," said Lieutenant Carl Minden, a spokesman for the Office of the Sheriff of Pulaski County.

In Missouri, the Pike County Sheriff's Department said three tornadoes were spotted in a delay of 45 minutes. Some houses and bars have been damaged. Tornadoes were also reported near St. Louis, and Lambert Airport the city has been closed for some time.

Northeast of St. Louis in the County of Macoupin Illinois, Director of the management of emergency Jim Pitchford said two houses were destroyed and 15 damaged.

"It is quite clear to us, it was a tornado - at least one, possibly two,"Said Pitchford.""

Also in Illinois, the National Weather Service reported that strong winds managed to blow some cars off the coast of the railway in Taylorsville.

In Garland County, Ark., violent winds sent a tree crush on a busy House, but the family escaped unhurt, after a 911 call, said Joy Sanders, County Emergency Management Director.

In Oklahoma, storms seemed to save the city of Tushka, where a large tornado last week killed two people, at least 43 wounded and damaged or destroyed dozens of homes and businesses.

"All we have in our region were a few sprinkles," said emergency management director Roger McIninich. "We dragged type of past it.".

Thousands of Illinois Oklahoma people were left without power after storms.

Accessibility links

View the original article here

S & P: "Negative" Outlook on the United States long term debt.

反序列化操作“Translate”的响应消息的正文时出现错误。读取 XML 数据时，超出最大字符串内容长度配额 (8192)。通过更改在创建 XML 读取器时所使用的 XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas 对象的 MaxStringContentLength 属性，可增加此配额。 第 2 行，位置为 8195。
反序列化操作“Translate”的响应消息的正文时出现错误。读取 XML 数据时，超出最大字符串内容长度配额 (8192)。通过更改在创建 XML 读取器时所使用的 XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas 对象的 MaxStringContentLength 属性，可增加此配额。 第 1 行，位置为 8719。
April 18, 2011, 6:41 PM EDT By Rebecca Christie and Ian Katz

(Updates with economist quote in last paragraph.)

April 18 (Bloomberg) -- Standard & Poor’s put the U.S. government on notice that it risks losing its AAA credit rating unless policy makers agree on a plan by 2013 to reduce budget deficits and the national debt.

“If an agreement is not reached and meaningful implementation does not begin by then, this would in our view render the U.S. fiscal profile meaningfully weaker than that of peer ‘AAA’ sovereigns,” New York-based S&P said today in a report that maintained its top rating on U.S. long-term debt while lowering the outlook to “negative” for the first time.

S&P said there’s a one-in-three chance that the rating might be cut within two years and that its “baseline assumption” is that Congress and the Obama administration will come to terms on a plan to reduce record deficits. Treasuries and the dollar rebounded from early losses following the statement, while stocks declined. Moody’s Investor Service, which has a stable outlook on U.S. debt, today said the U.S. budget debate is “positive” for the country’s credit.

“For most investors there is nowhere else to put their money as the U.S. still has the strongest, deepest, most-liquid markets in the world,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. “There is no alternative.”

Speculation on Greece

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note jumped as high as 3.45 percent in the minutes after the S&P report from 3.37 percent. The yield was back down to 3.37 percent at 4:27 p.m. as investors focused on speculation that Greece will be unable to avoid a default, driving them to the relative safety of U.S. debt. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was down 1.1 percent at the 4 p.m. close of trading to 1,305.14 after declining as much as 1.9 percent.

Today’s announcement marks the first time the U.S. credit outlook has been questioned since 1995 and 1996, when a dispute between then-President Bill Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich led to government shutdowns. Fitch Ratings put U.S. debt on a “negative ratings watch” in November 1995 until spring 1996, and Moody’s put some U.S. government bonds on review for a possible downgrade in January 1996.

“We believe there is a material risk that U.S. policy makers might not reach an agreement on how to address medium-and long-term budgetary challenges by 2013,” S&P said in its statement today.

Pressure for Agreement

The action puts pressure on President Barack Obama and House Republicans to come to agreement on plans to reduce the national debt, which S&P says could rise to 84 percent of gross domestic product by 2013.

“S&P’s outlook certainly adds to motivation in Washington to confront our fiscal challenges,” said Tony Fratto, who served as a White House and U.S. Treasury official under President George W. Bush. “If economic authorities here fail to put in place a credible deficit reduction plan over the next two years, the concern is justified.”

Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s chief economic adviser, rejected the S&P’s negative outlook, calling it a “political judgment” that he said doesn’t deserve “too much weight.”

“They are saying their political judgment is that over the next two years they didn’t see a political agreement” to reduce long-term deficits, Goolsbee, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, told Bloomberg Television’s InBusiness with Margaret Brennan. “I don’t think that the S&P’s political judgment is right.”

$4 Trillion

Obama has proposed cutting $4 trillion in cumulative deficits within 12 years through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. The administration is resisting Republican calls for swifter cuts, while also pushing for a set of rules to enforce spending reductions over time.

Goolsbee said Obama and Republican congressional leaders are “pretty close” in the deficit reduction targets they have announced. Each has set a $4 trillion target, though House Republicans have a timeline of 10 years and the White House proposal would cumulatively cut that amount over 12 years.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor called the S&P warning “a wake-up call for those in Washington asking Congress to blindly increase the debt limit.”

S&P’s negative outlook “makes clear that the debt-limit increase proposed by the Obama administration must be accompanied by meaningful fiscal reforms that immediately reduce federal spending and stop our nation from digging itself further into debt,” the Virginia Republican said in a statement.

Spending, Taxes

S&P said it wasn’t taking a stand on the right mix of spending and revenue measures, saying only that any agreement must win the acceptance of a “cross section of leaders in both political parties” to be credible.

Sovereign credit quality has gained prominence as European countries from Greece to Portugal struggle to finance their debt. The Group of 20 nations named the U.S. as one of seven large economies that will face deeper scrutiny so their politics don’t derail a global expansion.

Overseas investors hold about half of the roughly $9 trillion in outstanding marketable U.S. debt, including $1.2 trillion held by China. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has said the U.S. shouldn’t be borrowing “from the Chinese” and other foreign investors to finance tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Maintaining investor confidence overseas will be a question of political credibility rather than solvency for the U.S., said Lena Komileva, global head of G10 strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co in London.

Lagging Behind

“In the relative universe of sovereign credits, investors are likely to view that the current episode of U.S. actions lagging behind market expectations as transitory which will keep U.S. risk premia contained,” Komileva said. “The euro remains the epicenter of global systemic risk.”

S&P didn’t mention the $14.29 trillion debt ceiling among the risks affecting the U.S. outlook, and it noted that the U.S. has “unique external flexibility” because the dollar is the world’s most-used currency. The ratings company focused on the political calendar, saying that if current budget negotiations fail, it might not be possible to get an agreement until at least the 2014 budget cycle.

Borrowing Limit

The Treasury Department has said the borrowing limit will be reached no later than May 16, at which point it will turn to emergency measures that provide borrowing room through about July 8. Republican leaders in Congress have said they won’t back increasing the debt ceiling unless Obama agrees to more specific steps to trim the budget deficit, estimated to top $1.6 trillion this year.

Alan Krueger, the Treasury’s former chief economist and an economics professor at Princeton University in New Jersey, said the record of S&P during the financial crisis has watered down the impact of its pronouncements on the safety of U.S. debt.

“The surprise to me is that the markets paid as much attention to S&P as they have,” Krueger said. “S&P has no private information, and their track record and judgment have been dismal.”

S&P was too influenced by Wall Street, had insufficient resources and used outdated models to grade mortgage securities that blew up when the U.S. housing market collapsed in 2007, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in an April 2010 report.

“Clearly, the U.S. fiscal situation is unsustainable unless a large, multiyear fiscal tightening is implemented,” economists at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., including Jan Hatzius, said in a research note. “However, there is no information in today’s report about the fiscal situation that was not already known. Academic research has generally found that rating-agency actions lag market pricing, rather than lead it.”

--With assistance from Carol Massar, Mary Childs, Shannon D. Harrington and Cordell Eddings in New York, and James Rowley and Julie Hirschfeld Davis in Washington. Editors: Christopher Wellisz, Kevin Costelloe

To contact the reporters on this story: Rebecca Christie in Washington at rchristie4@bloomberg.net; Ian Katz in Washington at ikatz2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chris Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net

View the original article here

Clean the United States after tornadoes kill 44

反序列化操作 "translate" 的响应消息的正文时出现错误。读取 XML 数据时，超出最大字符串内容长度配额 (8192) 。通过更改在创建 XML 读取器时所使用的 XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas 对象的 MaxStringContentLength 属性，可增加此配额。 第 1 行，位置为 9321。

Several states began the arduous cleanup process Monday after 240 tornadoes touched down across the United States over the weekend, killing at least 44 people.

The death toll across Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and the Carolinas stands at 44 after the region experienced some of the worst storms in decades. More than 60 tornadoes touched down in North Carolina alone, although officials say some storms may have been reported more than once.

One apparent twister passed near a Virginia nuclear power plant, knocking down power lines. Dominion Virginia Power said backup sources including diesel generators kept electricity going to maintain both units at its Surry Power Station. The tornado didn't hit the two nuclear units, which are designed to withstand calamities such as earthquakes and hurricanes, the company said.

More than 100 employees and customers screamed in unison when the steel roof was peeled off near a Lowe's store in Sanford, N.C., on Saturday. The store became part of the wreckage left by a pace storm system bristling with killer twisters that ripped through the South.

A man cuts down a tree in Raleigh, N.C., after tornadoes tore through the Carolinas over the weekend. (Chris Keane/Reuters)

"You could hear all the steel can, people screaming in fear for their lives," manager Michael Hollowell told The Associated Press on Sunday.

No one at the store was killed.

A state of emergency remains in effect for all of Virginia and South Carolina, and parts of four other states.

In all of Lee County, where Sanford is located, about 60 kilometres south of Raleigh, there was just one confirmed death from the storm, which claimed at least 21 lives statewide, damaged hundreds of homes and left a swath of destruction unmatched by any spring storm since the mid-1980s.

In Raleigh early Monday, authorities were blocking access to a mobile home park of about 200 homes where three children were killed. Officials planned to assess conditions after sunrise before deciding whether to allow residents to return home.

Power lines and trees still covered nearby roads. Where roads were clear, there were massive batteries of debris that had been pushed to the side of the street.

Although it will take weeks to tally the damage, the violent weather system is likely to rank among the largest in history. It is already the deadliest since the storms that hit numerous states on Super Tuesday in 2008.

Survivors were left to recall miraculous escapes.

In the Bladen County community of Ammon, about 110 kilometres south of Raleigh, Audrey McKoy and her husband Milton saw a tornado bearing down on them over the tops of the pine trees that surround the seven or eight mobile homes that make up their neighbourhood. He glanced at a nearby farm and saw the winds lifting pigs and other animals in the sky.

"it looked just like the wizard of Oz," Audrey said.

They took shelter in their laundry room and, after emerging once the storm had passed, were disoriented for a time. The twister had turned their mobile home and they were standing around in their backyard.

Milton found three bodies in their neighbourhood, including 92-year-old Marchester Avery and his 50-year-old son, Tony, who died in adjacent mobile homes. He stopped his wife from coming over to see.

"You don't want to look at this," he told her.

The storms crushed trailer parks and brought life in the centre of the state's second-largest city to a virtual standstill. It was the worst outbreak in the state since 22 twisters in 1984 killed 42 people.

North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue planned to tour hard-hit areas in three counties Monday. The devastation she saw Sunday left her near tears, she said. The storm pummelled bustling cities and remote rural communities. One of lost's stops was downtown Raleigh, where fallen trees blocked major thoroughfares and damage to the Shaw University campus forced it to cancel the remainder of its spring semester.

Lost said that she'd been in contact with President Barack Obama, who pledged his support, and that federal emergency management workers were already on the ground.

"We have in North Carolina a tremendous relationship with our federal partners and have been through this so many times," she said. "That's not a good thing." "That's a bad thing."

Residents look at a tree that fell into a home in Raleigh, N.C., over the weekend. (Chris Keane/Reuters)

The conditions that allowed for the storm occur on the Great Plains a few times a year on average goal almost never happen in North Carolina.

This time of the year the contrast between air masses across North America is tremendous, CBC nathorst Johanna Wagstaffe said. Cool, dry air to the north collides with warm, humid air to the south, with the collision occurring right over the Mississippi Valley path in this box.

The atmosphere was unstable Saturday, which allowed air to rise and fall quickly, creating winds of hurricane strength or greater. There was also plenty of moisture in the air, which fuelled violent storms. Shear winds at different heights, moving in different directions, created the spin needed to create tornadoes, Sharp said.

Many of the deaths across the state occurred in mobile homes like the ones in Ammon. The three deaths in Raleigh were in a mobile home park about eight kilometres north of downtown, which was still closed off to residents early Monday.

Census data from 2007, the latest available estimates 14.5 per cent of residences in North Carolina are mobile homes, the seventh highest percentage in the U.S. and well over the national average of 6.7 per cent.

North Carolina officials tallied more than 130 serious injuries, 65 homes destroyed and another 600 significantly damaged by Sunday evening, according to state public safety spokeswoman Julia Jarema. Officials expect those totals to climb as damage assessments continue.

Back at the Lowe's store, Joseph Rosser and his 13-year-old daughter, Hannah, had their Chevrolet Colorado pickup pulled off the road Saturday, seeking shelter. Instead, the store's exterior concrete toppled, crushing the truck's cab with Rosser and Hannah inside.

"I really didn't see much because I had a pillow over my face to protect my head and I heard my dad tell me it was going to be OK," said Hannah, her midsection wrapped in a back brace. "and then all of a sudden, I just heard a loud boom."

"My dad was lying there, telling me he was going to die." He sounded very hoarse like he couldn't breathe. "He was crying and was hurt really bad."

She crawled out the truck's shattered back window and ran around the parking lot calling for help, because her cellphone wouldn't can't work. Both Rossers are recovering from their injuries.

Residents and officials alike are looking to make repairs and start building what was lost.

Aleta Tootle and four other people took shelter in a closet in her Bertie County home, emerging with only a few scratches after the rest of the building was ripped to shreds. Surveying the wreckage Sunday, she said there was only one thing left to do.

"all we can do is start over," she said. "We don't have a choice."

With files from The Associated Press Back to accessibility links

View the original article here

NFL players ask the United States judge block lockout by the owners of the team

06 April 2011, 11: 15 am EDT by Andrew Harris and Beth Hawkins

(Updates with remarks of counsel for the player in the fourth paragraph).

April 6 (Bloomberg) - Super Bowl-winning National Football League quaterbacks Drew Brees, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning in addition to current and retired players of football pro groups asked a federal judge to terminate the locking of the work of the NFL.Today, the U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson in St. Paul, Minnesota, is hearing arguments on the dispute that threatens to disrupt the season of 2011 for more lucrative and the most-watched U.S. professional sports league.32 Teams of the NFL owners, said a lockout on 11 March, after failed it negotiations to create a new collective agreement and the Association of players to the NFL said it would work is more like a union. "" We are here to get your honour to lift the lockout prohibited so that these players can return to work ", James Quinn, an attorney for the players, said Nelson. "They have waived the right to file complaints, the right to strike." They have same health insurance for their families because the NFL has to cut. "This is the formula by which the League based in New York and his players would divide some 9 billion in annual revenue. During the lockout, players to be paid and teams can pas practice, sign new players or make trades.The draft of University players is still scheduled to start April 28. "Remain engaged '"NFL clubs remain committed to collective bargaining and the federal mediation process until an agreement is found", the League said in a press release on March 11. "The NFL calls the Union to resume negotiations immediately." NFL players, clubs and fans want an agreement. "The team owners voted on March 3, 2008 at the end of collective of the NFL with the players, saying that the agreement did not maintain account costs such as the construction of stages.The League and the players are also in disagreement on the provisions of health care, a rookie salary cap and whether to extend the season to 18 games in 16. "Talks collapsed weeks after the Super Bowl Championship game drew the largest television audience in the history of the United States".The NFL has a long history of violating federal antitrust law to minimize its costs of hand work, "the players, said in a trial commenced March 11 the lockout is designed to force them to accept massive pay reductions and anti-competitive restrictions"They said.Arguing that the conflict is the jurisdiction of the Federal regulatory authorities of the work, the League sought an injunction of the Cour.Tours of HandNFL lawyers called disavowal of the players of their union to Nelson to deny application of the players a tour of legal legerdemain. "A party to a collective bargaining relationship cannot, through its own tactical and unilateral conduct, instantly away from the Federal labour law or extinguish rights of another party of the right of workers," owners of the League said in a Cour.Nelson deposit will hear also the argument for an injunction to lawyers for retired Minnesota defensive lineman " Viking Carl Eller, former Kansas City Chiefs running back Priest Holmes and two other players claiming the lockout and the possible cancellation of the 2011 season will affect retirees and applicants who have not yet negotiated contracts to play in the pursuit Ligue.Cette, accusing the League to engage in a boycott of the illegal group and the fixing of prices, was filed on March 28. the case is Brady v. National League of Football, 11-cv-639; the case retired and rookie is Eller v. of the National Football League, 11-cv-748, the United States District Court, District of Minnesota.

-Editors: Peter Blumberg, Andrew Dunn

To contact the son to postpone this story: Andrew Harris to Chicago to the aharris16@bloomberg.net. Beth Hawkins at the Palace of justice U.S. in St. Paul, at Hawkins@visi.com.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha to the mhytha@bloomberg.net

View the original article here

Most large bank foreign bailout kept at the Munis United States on the runway

反序列化操作 "translate" 的响应消息的正文时出现错误。读取 XML 数据时，超出最大字符串内容长度配额 (8192) 。通过更改在创建 XML 读取器时所使用的 XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas 对象的 MaxStringContentLength 属性，可增加此配额。 第 1 行，位置为 9403。
April 06, 2011, 12: 20 AM EDT By Bob Ivry

(Find details of banks' borrowing from the Federal Reserve's discount window at LEND .)

April 6 (Bloomberg) - A European bank that received the most Federal Reserve discount window help during the financial crisis also took $381 billion in aid from its home countries and owned subsidiaries implicated in bid-rigging that prosecutors say defrauded U.S. taxpayers.Details of Fed lending released last week show that Dexia SA, based in Brussels and Paris, borrowed as much as $37 billion, with an average daily loan amount of $12.3 trillion in the 18 months after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed in September 2008. The House subcommittee that oversees the Fed plans hearings on the central bank's discount window lending to offshore financial institutions next month.By lending to Dexia, the Fed kept money flowing into local government projects throughout the U.S. as well as the money market funds that invested in them. "Dexia guaranteed bonds issued by entities as varied as the Texas State Veterans Land Board in Austin and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.""If Dexia went bankrupt, it could have been a disaster for municipal finance and money funds," said Matt Fabian, a Concord, Massachusetts-based senior analyst and managing director at Municipal Markets Advisors, an independent research company. "The market has extensive exposure to foreign banks."97 - Year SecretOverseas banks accounted for about 70 percent of discount window loans when borrowing reached its peak of $113.7 billion in October 2008, according to the Fed's data. The discount window, established in 1914, is known as the lender of last resort.By law, most U.S. branches of foreign banks have access to the discount window, said David Skidmore, a spokesman for the American central bank. "They are important providers of credit to U.S. businesses and households, and discount window lending during the financial crisis helped support their continued lending in the United States," he said.The Fed has kept secret discount window borrowers for 97 years. Last week's disclosures were short-mandated after legal victories by Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, and News Corp.'s Fox News Network LLC.DEPFA Bank Plc, a German-owned bank based in Dublin, was another insurer of municipal bonds in the U.S. Depfa's discount window borrowing peaked at $28.5 trillion in November 2008.Loans and GuaranteesDexia, which borrowed $37 billion from the discount window in January 2009, said its loans from the European Central Bank peaked at 122 billion euros ($173 billion) in October 2008. That month, it also received about $200 billion in debt guarantees and $8 billion in cash herbal tea from Belgium, France and Luxembourg.The bank availed itself of other Fed lending programs too. Its total borrowings from the U.S. central bank's Commercial Paper Funding Facility ranked third among users of the emergency program created to support the market for short-term debt issued by banks and corporations. Dexia used the program 42 times for a total of $53.5 billion, according to data the Fed released in December.Dexia also tapped the Term Auction Facility, the lending mechanism the Fed established in December 2007 to increase the discount window. Dexia received 24 TAF loans totaling $105.2 billion, the largest of which was $16.7 billion on Jan. 17, 2008, Fed data show. The lender used TAF about twice a month from December 2007 to September 2008, then once in August 2009 and once more in November 2009. The interest rates it paid ranged from 4.65 percent in December 2007 to 0.25 percent for the two loans in 2009.Fed Loans RepaidThe Fed loans have been repaid, said Ulrike Pommee, a Brussels-based Dexia spokeswoman. "The bank used the Fed's emergency lending facilities to finance U.S. assets only, Pommee said in an e-mail statement.""We have always been very transparent in our communications about the wear and tear on us in the market during the crisis," said Pommee.In 2008, Dexia was hit with buyback provisions in municipal bonds, said Pommee. The bank was one of the biggest backstops of the bonds, providing letters of credit or so-called standby purchase agreements - guarantees to buy the bonds if investors wanted out. Dexia's so-called credit enhancement made it possible for money market funds to buy the bonds.Dexia provided $14.7 billion in standby agreements and letters of credit in North and South America, excluding Mexico, in the first half of 2008, has six-fold increase over the same period a year earlier, the bank said in its first-half 2008 report.Dwindling Participants "This growth was the direct result of a dwindling number of market participants able to offer such financial products combined with the urgent needs of issuers to restructure their debt," Dexia said.Over most of the last decade, thousands of cities, counties, hospitals and universities issued long-term floating - rate bonds and paired them with interest-rate swaps to try to protect against higher borrowing costs. The strategy, which relied on banks such as Dexia to guarantee a market for the variable-rate notes, collapsed when investment firms and bond insurers lost their top credit ratings.Interest-rate swaps are derivatives, or contracts whose values are derived from assets including stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities, or from events such as changes in interest rates or the weather. Swaps are private contracts and the market for them isn 't regulated.'Days From Bankruptcy'Redemptions sapped Dexia so much that the bank was "two days from bankruptcy", Pommee said, citing the French ministry for the economy.Dexia's lifeline from U.S. taxpayers came as federal officials were investigating allegations that the bank's subsidiaries colluded with others to defraud state and local governments.Two form Dexia units were among more than a dozen financial firms that conspired to pay below-market interest rates to U.S. state and local governments on so-called guaranteed investment contracts, or GICs, according to documents filed in a U.S. Justice Department antitrust criminal case.Municipalities buy GICs with money raised by selling bonds, allowing them to earn a return until the funds are needed for schools, roads and other public works.An employee of Financial Security Assurance Holdings Ltd., one of the Dexia subsidiaries, agreed to pay kickbacks ranging from $4,500 to $475,000 to a Los Angeles investment broker called CDR Financial Products Inc. in exchange for rigging bids, according to people familiar with the case and public records.Fed InformationCDR employees fed information on competitors' bids to FSA, allowing the firm to win deals at a lower interest rate than it would have paid, according to a federal indictment, public records and the people.Steven Goldberg, has train FSA banker, was indicted in July on fraud and conspiracy charges. He has pleaded not guilty. FSA, which hasn ain't been indicted, is facing a lawsuit from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. While Dexia sold the bond insurance unit of FSA, it remained exposed to legal risks because it kept another division of the company, its Financial Products segment, Dexia said in its third - quarter 2010 report.Dexia has said its funding from the European Central Bank remained at 18 billion euros in February 2011. Still, its borrowing from the Fed "was a temporary situation and now they're trading just fine," said Nat Singer of Swap Financial Group LLC in South Orange, New Jersey.

-With assistance from John Martens in Brussels, Martin z. Braun in New York and William Selway in Washington. Editors: John Voskuhl, Ted Bunker.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Ivry in New York at bivry@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gary Putka at gputka@bloomberg.net.

View the original article here