SOMETIMES ALL IT TAKES IS A SUBHEAD...:

Last ditch bid to stave off fresh bank panic: World waits for US bail-out decision (Ruth Sunderland and James Robinson, 9/27/08,
The Observer)

...to explain how irresponsible the Right is being. They're as afraid of acting like the superpower we are in the financial field as Democrats are in fields of fire. W summed the situation up with typical concision in the White House meeting the other day: “If money isn’t loosened up, this sucker could go down.”

MORE:
Lending deep-freeze: Tight lending in focus as a key measure reaches highest level ever (David Goldman and Catherine Clifford, 9/26/08, CNNMoney.com)

"Things have frozen over again," said Steve Van Order, chief fixed income strategist with Calvert Funds. "Banks are nervous about lending to each other, and the commercial paper market has come to a standstill."

Market gauges of lending showed higher prices for loans between banks. When lending tightens in this way, businesses and consumers have to pay more for loans, such as mortgages, or can't get them at all.

For instance, one gauge that banks use to determine lending rates rose to an all-time high. The difference between the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, and the Overnight Index Swaps rose to an unprecedented 2.08%. The Libor-OIS "spread," or difference between the two rates, measures how much cash is available for lending between banks. The higher the spread, the lower availability of cash for lending.

Another lending measure was just below a 26-year high. The "TED spread" - the difference between three-month Libor, what banks pay to borrow money for three months, and the three-month Treasury borrowing rates - was at 2.94% after hitting 3.37% Thursday, the widest margin for that measure since 1982. Just a three weeks ago, the TED spread was at 1.04%.

With loads of troubled assets on their balance sheets, banks are hesitant to take on more loans if the risk of default is high. Furthermore, when banks need to write down those assets, they have less cash on hand to issue loans. That stops the financial system's gears from turning, in turn hurting customers who need a loan to finance a home, a car or tuition.

"The interbank lending markets are clogged up, because there is a freeze-up in the pipes that normally carry funding from central banks to banks to customers," Van Order explained.