WASHINGTON — The Obama administration formally presented the latest step in its financial rescue package on Monday, an attempt to draw private investors into partnership with a new federal entity that could eventually buy up to $1 trillion in troubled assets that are weighing down banks and clogging up the credit markets.
The Dow Jones industrial average was up sharply early Monday, gaining more than 300 points by midday. When the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, spoke on Feb. 10 of a bank rescue plan without offering much detail, investors took that as a worrying sign and the Dow fell sharply, losing 380 points.
The Treasury secretary did not deny the uncertainties inherent in the new program on Monday but defended it as a practical approach. “There is no doubt the government is taking a risk,” Mr. Geithner said, “the only question is how best to do it.”
The success or failure of the plan carries not only enormous stakes for the nation’s recovery but certain political risks for Mr. Geithner as well. At least two Republican senators have called for his resignation. And on Sunday, Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, told Fox News that “if he keeps going down this road, I think that he won’t last long.”
Initially, a new Public-Private Investment Program will provide financing for $500 billion in purchasing power to buy those troubled or toxic assets — which the government refers to more diplomatically as legacy assets — with the potential of expanding later to as much as $1 trillion, according to a fact sheet issued by the Treasury Department.
At the core of the financing package will be $75 billion to $100 billion in capital from the existing financial bailout known as TARP, the Troubled Assets Relief Program, along with the share provided by private investors, which the government hopes will come to 5 percent or more. By leveraging this program through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Reserve, huge amounts of bad loans can be acquired.
The private investors would be subsidized but could stand to lose their investments, while the taxpayers could share in prospective profits as the assets are eventually sold, the Treasury said. The administration said that it expected participation from pension funds to insurance companies and other long-term investors.
The plan calls for the government to put up most of the money for buying up troubled assets, and it would give private investors a clearly advantageous deal. In one program, the Treasury would match one-for-one every dollar of equity that private investors invest of their own money in each “Public Private Investment Fund.”
On top of that the F.D.I.C. — tapping its own credit lines with the Treasury — would lend six dollars for each dollar invested by the Treasury and private investors. If the mortgage pool turns bad and runs big losses, the private investors would be able to walk away from their F.D.I.C. loans and leave the government holding the soured mortgages and the bulk of the losses.
The Treasury Department offered this illustrative example of how the program would work: A pool of bad residential mortgage loans with a face value of, say, $100 is auctioned by the F.D.I.C. Private investors would submit bids. In the example, the top bidder, an investor offering $84, would win and purchase the pool. The F.D.I.C. would guarantee loans for $72 of that purchase price. The Treasury would then invest in half the $12 equity, with funds coming from the $700 billion bailout program; the private investor would contribute the remaining $6.
For a relatively small equity exposure, the private investor thus stands to make a considerable return if prices recover. The government will make a gain as well. In the worst case, the bulk of the risk would fall on the government. The presumption, of course, is that the auction will lead to realistic purchase prices.
One institutional investor said he was surprised that the government was lending so much of the money, saying that private investors have been willing to buy up pools of mortgage-backed securities with less “leverage” or outside borrowing than the Treasury proposed on Monday.
The true magnitude of the toxic-asset purchase program could amount to well over $1 trillion. Buried in Mr. Geithner’s announcement was the detail that the Treasury would dramatically revise and expand its joint venture with the Federal Reserve, known as the Term Asset-backed Secure Lending Facility, which was originally created to finance consumer lending and some forms of business lending.
Starting soon, the program will be expanded to finance investors who want to buy existing mortgages and mortgage-backed securities, including commercial real estate mortgages. By allowing the so-called TALF program to buy up older “legacy” assets, as well as new loans, the Treasury and Fed will be putting nearly an additional $1 trillion on the line — on top of all the money being provided through the F.D.I.C. program and the Treasury partnership programs announced on Monday.
The department defined three basic principles underlying the overall program. First, by combining government financing, involving the F.D.I.C. and the Federal Reserve, with private sector investment, “substantial purchasing power will be created, making the most of taxpayer resources,” the fact sheet said.
Second, private investors will share both in the risk and potential profits, the Treasury Department said, “with the private sector investors standing to lose their entire investment in a downside scenario and the taxpayer sharing in profitable returns.”
The third principle is the use of competitive auctions to help set appropriate prices for the assets. “To reduce the likelihood that the government will overpay for these assets, private sector investors competing with one another will establish the price of the loans and securities purchased,” the department said.
By emphasizing that private investors will share in the risk, the Treasury Department seemed to be seeking to reassure ordinary taxpayers that they will not be bear the entire downside burden of yet another $1 trillion program.
At the same time, administration officials strove over the weekend to reassure potential investors that they will not be subjected to the sort of pressures, criticism and public outrage that followed reports of the million-dollar bonuses to executives of the American International Group.
The Treasury Department defended its approach as a compromise that would avoid the dangers both of too gradualist an approach and of one in which taxpayers bear the entire risk.
“Simply hoping for banks to work legacy assets off over time risks prolonging a financial crisis, as in the case of the Japanese experience,” the department said. “But if the government acts alone in directly purchasing legacy assets, taxpayers will take on all the risk of such purchases — along with the additional risk that taxpayers will overpay if government employees are setting the price for those assets.”
The plan relies on private investors to team with the government to relieve banks of assets tied to loans and mortgage-linked securities of unknown value. There have been virtually no buyers of these assets because of their uncertain risk.
But some executives at private equity firms and hedge funds, who were briefed on the plan Sunday afternoon, are anxious about the recent uproar over millions of dollars in bonus payments made to executives of the American International Group.
Some of them have told administration officials that they would participate only if the government guaranteed that it would not set compensation limits on the firms, according to people briefed on the conversations.
Mr. Geithner made it clear on Monday that no limits on executive compensation would be imposed on companies that invest — unless the companies are already subject to such limitations as recipients of TARP money — because the government does not want to discourage investor participation.
Administration officials took to the airwaves Sunday to reassure investors that the public would distinguish between companies like A.I.G., which are taking government bailout money, and private investment groups that, under this latest plan, would be helping the government take troubled assets off the books of some of the country’s biggest banks.
“What we’re talking about now are private firms that are kind of doing us a favor, right, coming into this market to help us buy these toxic assets off banks’ balance sheets,” Christina D. Romer, the White House’s chief economist, said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”
“I think they understand that the president realizes they’re in a different category,” she said, adding, “They are firms that are being the good guys here.”
Eric Dash and Rachel L. Swarns reported from Washington, and Andrew Ross Sorkin from New York.
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