1. Some more information about the rescue vehicle would be nice - estimates of the size of the fund are anything from $60 billion to $100 billion. HSBC and Dresdner have now (reportedly) joined.

2. The first public refusal has been issued - Pimco was supposedly interested, but has now pulled back. It'd be very interesting to see exactly how much the fund has raised so far in terms of commitments.

3. One really shouldn't call it the "Superfund" given that, in the US, a Superfund site is an area of ground so horribly contaminated by toxic waste that the federal government has been forced to step in to clean it up, or at any rate to stop the blight spreading. Or maybe one should call it the "Superfund" for exactly that reason.

4. Paul Krugman is sceptical about the whatever it is:

Right now the bleeding edge of the crisis in confidence involves worries that there may be large losses hidden inside so-called “structured investment vehicles” — basically hedge funds that borrow from the public and invest the proceeds in mortgage-backed securities. The new plan would create a “super-fund,” the Master Liquidity Enhancement Conduit, which would seek to restore confidence by, um, borrowing from the public and investing the proceeds in mortgage-backed securities.

The plan, in other words, looks like an attempt to solve the problem with smoke and mirrors.

That might work if there were no good reason for investors to be worried. But in this case, investors have very good reasons to worry: the bursting of the housing bubble means that someone, somewhere, has to accept several trillion dollars in losses. A significant part of these losses will fall on mortgage-backed securities. And given this reality, the “conduit” looks like a really bad idea...Mr. Greenspan’s take... seems broadly similar... this rescue scheme could be seen as an attempt to hide the bad debts everyone knows are out there, and as a result could delay any return of trust to the markets.

Alan Greenspan is making sense.