Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Fund Liquidity Facility - AMLF

  

It sounds like a Tom Wolfe book, a la The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test or The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. Only this time set in the world's most boring subculture.
Actually, far from being boring (for a financial organization), the AMLF (as it's commonly called) came about during one of the most fraught periods in Wall Street history. It was created during the financial crisis as one of the programs governmental agencies put into place in order to unfreeze markets and prevent a full-scale deterioration of the financial system.
At the time (the AMLF was announced in September of 2008), money market mutual funds, a commonly-used short-term investment vehicle, were having trouble meeting requests for withdrawals. Investors were desperately trying to get cash amid the (figurative) burning ashes of Wall Street, meaning that they were pulling funds out of money market accounts. Meanwhile, other markets were frozen by the financial crisis, leading to a situation where the funds themselves were having trouble selling assets.
The AMLF was put in place to solve this impasse. It remained in place for about a year and a half, eventually winding down in February of 2010. According to the Federal Reserve, which set up the program, the AMLF repaid all its loans in full, with interest.

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