WASHINGTON — The Treasury is scheduled to host a meeting today with executives at the top bank holding companies to discuss solutions for the financial crisis.
"Treasury and the Fed are meeting today with leading financial market participants to finalize details on a financial market stabilization initiative," a Treasury spokeswoman said.
The meeting is occurring at 3 p.m. at Treasury, and will include Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Ken Lewis, the chief executive of Bank of America, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Vikram Pandit, the CEO of Citigroup, Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs Group, and Robert Kelly, the CEO of Bank of New York Mellon.
The bankers were already in Washington for International Monetary Fund meetings.
Sources familiar with the meeting said possible topics include details of a government program to buy troubled assets from banks, a plan to directly invest capital in institutions, granting unlimited deposit insurance coverage to depositors, and regulatory restructuring.
An announcement on the results of the meeting or a plan by Treasury could come in the next 24 hours.
The meeting came the same day that Neel Kashkarki, interim assistant secretary for financial stability, gave an update on the implementation of the bailout plan. Treasury Department is moving ahead with its $700 billion bailout plan, including hiring at least one asset manager.
"A program as large and complex as this would normally take months — or even years — to establish," Mr. Kashkari said. "We don't have months or years. Hence, we are moving to implement the TARP as quickly as possible while working to ensure high quality execution. Our goal is to use the multiple tools enabled by the TARP to attack the capital and troubled asset problem from multiple directions, so American families and businesses can get the credit they need."
He divided the implementation of the program into seven parts: a mortgage-backed securities program, a whole-loan purchase program, an insurance program to insure troubled assets, an equity purchase program, a homeownership preservation program, executive compensation, and an oversight and compliance program.
Treasury has hired the firm Ennis Knupp to help review asset manager proposals. Treasury has published conflict of interest standards for participating asset managers. It limited possible firms to those with with $100 billion of fixed income asset under their management.
He also announced that Treasury has recruited current government staff to run the program. They include Tom Bloom, chief financial officer of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, serving as interim CFO for the troubled asset program; Jonathan Fiechter, deputy director of the International Monetary Fund Monetary and Capital Markets Department in charge of financial supervision and crisis management; Donna Gambrell, director of the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund to serve as interim chief of Homeownership Preservation; Don Hammond, deputy director of the Division of Federal Reserve Bank Operations and Payment Systems; and Reuben Jeffrey, undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs to serve as interim chief investment officer.
Treasury also hired the law firm Simpson Thatcher to advise on the program.
