By Sean Farrell,
A fund managed by the US private equity giant Carlyle Group has become the latest to be hit by demands from lending banks making calls on loans secured on mortgage bonds.
Carlyle Capital Corp, a publicly traded fund that holds $21.7bn (£10.8bn) of securities, said it had received a default notice from one of its lending banks and expected at least one more after it failed to meet demands for extra security from jittery counterparties.
The Guernsey-based fund has struggled to meet more than $60m of margin calls and demands for extra collateral since the start of the month. It met the calls until Wednesday, when it was landed with more than $37m of demands and missed four out of seven calls.
John Stomber, the chief executive of Carlyle Capital, said counterparties were demanding margin prices that did not represent the underlying recoverable value of the fund's assets. Carlyle Capital's investments are all AAA-rated securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the US-Government-sponsored mortgage finance agencies.
"This disconnect has created instability and variability in our repo financing arrangements," he added. "Management is actively working with the company's repo counterparties to develop more stable financing terms."
The ...   more »

By Ye Xie
March 13 (Bloomberg) -- The dollar traded at a record low against the euro as firms from Citigroup Inc. to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said the Federal Reserve's plan to inject $200 billion into the banking system may fail to break the freeze in money-market lending.
The U.S. currency plunged yesterday against the euro, yen and Swiss franc, erasing a rally from March 11 when the Fed said it would lend Treasuries to financial institutions and take mortgage debt as collateral. Traders bet the Fed will cut rates by as much as three quarters of a percentage point next week to avert a recession, while the European Central Bank keeps borrowing costs unchanged at 4 percent.
The Fed's plan ``doesn't change the fact that U.S. yields are very low relative to the rest of the industrialized world and are likely to remain low for the foreseeable future,'' Daniel Katzive, a currency strategist at Credit Suisse Group, said in an interview with Bloomberg radio. ``That's weighing on the dollar.''
The dollar traded at $1.5551 at 6 a.m. in Tokyo. It tumbled 1.4 percent yesterday, the most since January 2006, and touched $1.5571 per euro, the weakest level since ...   more »

INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - Indiana voters on Tuesday elected a Muslim to Congress, only the second of that faith chosen in U.S. history.
Andre Carson, grandson of the late Democrat Rep. Julia Carson, was elected to serve the balance of her term in the U.S. House of Representatives in a special election.
She died in December 2007, after serving 11 years in the heavily Democratic district.
The younger Carson, 33, a member of the Indianapolis City Council who converted to Islam about a decade ago, will serve out the remainder of his grandmother's term through calendar 2008. He beat Republican Jon Elrod and a third party candidate with 52 percent of the vote to 44 percent for Elrod.
The first and only other Muslim member of the U.S. Congress is Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, also a Democrat, who is in his first term.
Carson will face a strong challenge against other contenders in a May primary which will determine who runs in November for the next full two-year term in the district which covers most of the city of Indianapolis.
His Democratic opponents then are expected to be two state legislators -- Carolene Mays, an Indianapolis newspaper publisher, and David ...   more »

By MARIA CHENG 
Immunizations FAQ - Read answers to frequently asked questions about immunizations.
RevolutionHealth.com
LONDON (AP) - As doctors struggle to eradicate polio worldwide, one of their biggest problems is persuading parents to vaccinate their children. In Belgium, authorities are resorting to an extreme measure: prison sentences.
Two sets of parents in Belgium were recently handed five month prison terms for failing to vaccinate their children against polio. Each parent was also fined 4,100 euros ($8,000).
"It's a pretty extraordinary case," said Dr. Ross Upshur, director of the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto.
"The Belgians have a right to take some action against the parents, given the seriousness of polio, but the question is, is a prison sentence disproportionate?"
The parents can still avoid prison - their sentences were delayed to give them a chance to vaccinate their children. But if that deadline also passes without their children receiving the injections, the parents could be put behind bars.
Because of privacy laws, Belgian officials would not talk specifically about the case, such as why the parents refused the vaccine or how much longer they have to vaccinate their children.
The polio vaccine is the only ...   more »

Monday March 10, 10:52 am ET Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross says the current market downturn differs from previous slumps in that no American banks have yet failed this time, but he suggests that's about to change.
"I think that's going to be the next wave, and coupled with problems in the commercial real estate market; I think they'll be the next bubbles that burst," the chairman and CEO of W. L. Ross and Company told CNBC's "Squawk Box" in an exclusive interview.
He was asked about the risks to big banks.
"I think that the big banks won't fail in the sense that they will go to zero and depositors would lose money," Ross replied. "I think the Fed and other regulators will make things happen.| I think it's the medium-sized banks, and particularly some of those that got overextended with the subprime and other kind of mortgage debt.| I think those are the ones that had the serious mismatch, making 20- and 30-year loans based on 90-day deposits."
Ross's comments echo those made by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who told a Senate committee on Feb. 28 that some smaller regional banks that heavily invested in real estate could ...   more »