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The Federal Reserve is working on a plan that would give it authority to regulate the clearing of trades for the $33 trillion credit-default swap market, according to people with knowledge of the proposal.

The Fed, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are discussing a memorandum of understanding that lays out oversight of clearinghouses that would become the central counterparty to credit-default swap trades, said the people who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.

The SEC and CFTC would also share trading information under the plan, the people said.

“The main concern is systemic risk and that's much more in the Fed's wheelhouse than the SEC or CFTC,'' said Craig Pirrong, a finance professor at the University of Houston who studies futures markets. “The Fed is the natural place for it to go.''

The Fed has been pushing the industry to form a clearinghouse that would absorb losses should a market maker fail. Regulators stepped up their efforts after the failure of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September and the near-collapse of American International Group Inc. The New York Fed has been meeting with groups including CME Group Inc., Intercontinental Exchange Inc. and NYSE Euronext to press them to accelerate their progress.

New York Fed spokesman Andrew Williams and Treasury spokeswoman Michele Davis didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. CFTC spokesman David Gary and the SEC's John Nester declined to comment.

Announcement This Week

Credit-default swaps are financial instruments based on bonds and loans that are used to speculate on a company's ability to repay debt. They were conceived to protect bondholders against default, and pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent should the company fail to adhere to its debt agreements short-term cash loans.

An announcement of the regulatory structure could come by the end of the week when President George W. Bush hosts a gathering of world leaders in Washington to discuss ways to fix the financial crisis, said one of the people who has read a draft of the plan.

“All the regulators want to push this forward,'' Pirrong said. “The credit crisis meeting on Friday is as good an excuse as any.''

Chicago-based CME Group is competing with Intercontinental Exchange of Atlanta and NYSE Euronext to create a system. CME Group Chief Executive Officer Craig Donohue said last week that he is open to Fed oversight for his clearing plan. CME Group is currently regulated by the CFTC.

ICE, CME

Intercontinental Exchange Chief Executive Officer Jeff Sprecher has set up his clearing plan as a special purpose banking entity within the state of New York. Intercontinental agreed to buy Chicago-based Clearing Corp. last week to help it get participation in its plan from the nine major banks that own the Clearing Corp. and that make up the majority of the market.

CME Group, partnered with hedge fund Citadel Investment Group LLC, has said it is ready to begin clearing CDS contracts as soon as it receives regulatory approval. Sprecher said today his group may be ready before year end.

“We're waiting for regulatory approval. I think positions will start moving in the next few weeks,'' he said at the Futures Industry Association conference in Chicago today.

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Catholic Healthcare West, the San Francisco hospital system that is the eighth largest in the nation, said Monday that two senior executives will share executive vice president/COO positions within the 41-hospital organization.

Bill Hunt and Marvin O’Quinn, the two executives, will each have operational responsibility for about half of CHW’s facilities. They replace Michael Erne, who retired this month after being with CHW since 1997, officials said Oct. 13.

By making this move, CHW said, it has eliminated three “group president of operations” positions, resulting in a flattening of the operations structure for the organization.

Hunt was promoted from an internal position as president of group operations, responsible for overseeing the operations of 15 hospitals in Northern California and Reno, Nevada. He had held several leadership roles at CHW since 1996, officials said.

He also served as president/CEO of the CHW Medical Foundation, a 300-plus physician group practice in Northern California. In his new role Hunt will be responsible for operations in Northern California from the Oregon border south to Kern County, CHW said, along with “physician engagement efforts” throughout the 41-hospital system.

O’Quinn is currently president and CEO of Miami’s Jackson Health System, where he will remain until year-end. He will join CHW Jan. 1.

He will be responsible for facilities in Arizona, Nevada and California from San Luis Obispo south, along with integrated process management and ambulatory operations cheap payday advance.

“Bill and Marvin bring a breadth of health-care experience to CHW,” Lloyd Dean, CHW’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “They are ideally suited to this role, I have the utmost confidence in their leadership, and I look forward to working with them to further strengthen our ministry and ensure that all who need health-care are able to receive it.”

Dean added that the two-headed COO model’s benefit is “a much broader range of expertise and oversight for an organization of our size than would be possible under the conventional, single-executive approach.”

Late last week, CHW reported that its operating income for the fiscal year ended June 30 dropped 47 percent, revenue grew 12 percent, and investment income dropped 81 percent, due largely to accounting changes and one-time write-offs, according to a report in the Sacramento Business Journal, an affiliated publication. Operating income fell to $160 million in core businesses, down from nearly $300 million the previous year.

Net income, meanwhile, tumbled to $170 million from $891 million the prior year, the Sacramento paper reported, but would have been $485 million not including one-time events.

The three-state system has nearly 10,000 doctors and 53,000 employees.

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The Federal Reserve arranged to channel $30 billion into the global financial system by opening currency swap lines with four central banks to relieve shortages of dollars in markets worldwide.

The Fed and central banks in Australia, Denmark, Norway and Sweden set up the currency exchange to address “elevated pressures'' in dollar funding in markets, the Board of Governors said today in a statement.

The U.S. is broadening its effort to revive confidence in markets amid concern a $700 billion plan to rescue the banking system may face delays in Congress. The Fed last week expanded its temporary swap lines with the European Central Bank and Swiss National Bank by $70 billion, and created $110 billion in new facilities with central banks in Japan, the U.K. and Canada.

“This is another weapon in the arsenal of governments aimed at boosting confidence,'' said Joshua Williamson, a senior strategist at TD Securities Ltd. in Sydney. “Hopefully it will help market sentiment, stop banks from hoarding cash and start greasing the wheels of the financial economy.''

After the announcement borrowing costs for Australian banks fell from the highest since Bear Stearns Cos. collapsed six months ago.

Money-Market Rates

The difference between the rate banks charge each other for three-month loans and the overnight indexed swap rate declined to 82.5 basis points as of 4:10 p.m. in Sydney from as much as 93.25 points earlier today.

The yen declined as the plan gave investors confidence to buy assets that have higher yields outside Japan. The yen fell to 155.69 per euro at 7:38 a.m. in London from 154.63 late yesterday in New York. It was at 105.92 versus the dollar from 105.56.

The programs “are designed to improve liquidity conditions in global financial markets,'' the Fed said. “Central banks continue to work together during this period of market stress and are prepared to take further steps as the need arises.''

Central bankers are trying to break a credit logjam in money markets as $522 billion in writedowns and losses tied to the U.S. mortgage market prompt bankers to hoard cash.

Preemptive Moves

“It shows the severity of the problem the Fed anticipates as we head into the last quarter of the year, and it's putting in place the infrastructure needed,'' said Venkatraman Anantha- Nageswaran, head of research at Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd. in Singapore. “The Fed's pre-emptive moves in setting up these swap lines suggest that it's not taking any chances.''

The Federal Open Market Committee, a group of Fed Board governors and regional reserve bank presidents, voted to authorize a swap facility totaling $10 billion each for the Reserve Bank of Australia and Riksbank in Sweden, and $5 billion each for the central banks of Norway and Denmark cash advance loan.

The Bank of Japan supplied $30 billion today to banks and brokerages in its first money-market operation since last week's $60 billion swap arrangement with the Fed.

Bank of England

The Bank of England yesterday allocated $30.1 billion in loans, its fourth overnight dollar auction and the most since it began the emergency sales last week.

“This agreement is a part of our precautionary measures and provides the Riksbank with additional flexibility to provide U.S. dollar liquidity if the need should arise,'' said Riksbank Governor Stefan Ingves in a statement on the bank's web site. “Our assessment is that financial stability in Sweden is satisfactory and that the Swedish banks are profitable and solvent.''

Swap lines were first established in December when officials joined forces to boost dollar liquidity around the world after interest-rate reductions in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada failed to ease concerns about bank lending.

Joint Action

The joint action is the latest attempt by central bankers to fight the financial crisis, which deepened last week after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy and the U.S. government took over American International Group Inc.

Central banks in Frankfurt, London and Zurich this week kept up their dollar auctions to provide liquidity to financial markets.

Denmark's central bank on Sept. 22 said it's raising the issuance of Treasury bills through an extraordinary auction of as much as 25 billion kroner ($4.9 billion) to meet lender demand for secure notes. The notes can be used as collateral by so-called primary dealers to boost liquidity.

Sweden's central bank on the same day decided to loosen the rules on what collateral it will accept when lending money in order to increase liquidity. Australia pumped more than A$12 billion ($10 billion) into its banking system last week.

“The swap serves to alleviate a shortage of U.S. dollar liquidity which has affected market participants around the world including in the Asia-Pacific time zone,'' the Australian central bank said.

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Zvue Corp. made Ulysses Curry, who joined its board six weeks ago, chairman and interim CEO, replacing former CEO Jeff Oscodar.

Oscodar has been CEO for four years at Zvue, which was formerly named Handheld Entertainment.

Curry, once the chief financial officer of Accuray Inc. (NASDAQ: ARAY), took a seat on the San Francisco company’s board on Aug. 4. There’s been a lot of turbulence on the board this summer, with several directors quitting their seats. Robert Austrian left the board Sept. 9.

Zvue (NASDAQ: ZVUE) lost two directors in July, when Allan Grafman and Mitchell Koulouris quit, leaving the company with a shortage of independent directors no fax payday loans. Koulouris and Grafman were added to the board as independent directors effective March 4, after David Hadley and Geoff Mulligan quit. Both Koulouris, 47, and Grafman, 54, worked on the nominating, compensation and audit committees.

CFO Tom Hillman quit Aug. 15.

The company runs web sites like holylemon.com, dorks.com and funmansion.com. It also sells MP3 players and makes content through royalty deals with content providers for the device.

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OPEC ministers on Monday gathered in Vienna ahead of a meeting to review output policy, but were widely expected to leave formal targets unchanged, especially as a powerful hurricane could lift oil prices.

A hard core of ministers has said the market is over-supplied following months of over-production led by top exporter Saudi Arabia.

They have argued output must be reduced sooner or later to bolster prices, which have plunged by nearly 30 percent from a record above $147 a barrel hit in July.

The oil market touched a five-month low just above $105 on Friday, under pressure from economic weakness and lower fuel consumption.

They recovered to above $107 a barrel on Monday as traders weighed the risk Hurricane Ike could crash into energy installations in the U.S americashadvance. Gulf of Mexico after sweeping through Cuba.

“Of course, of course. I believe that the market is over-supplied,” Iranian Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari told reporters on arrival in Vienna early on Monday.

Iran, together with Venezuela, which also has a big-spending, populist government, has been at the forefront of those seeking a high price.

Nozari has said $100 a barrel was the minimum acceptable, while the country’s OPEC governor was quoted on Sunday as saying the price could not fall below $80 as that was the cost of bringing on some new fields. 

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Europeans' confidence in the economic outlook fell more than economists forecast this month as the economy teetered on the brink of a recession. Inflation unexpectedly slowed.

An index of executive and consumer sentiment dropped to 88.8 from 89.5 in July, the European Commission in Brussels said today. That is below the 89.3 median estimate of 26 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Inflation fell to 3.8 percent from 4 percent last month and consumers' outlook on prices plunged.

The euro pared gains after the reports, which signaled the slump in economic growth is extending through the third quarter and a 20 percent drop in oil prices from a record $147.27 a barrel last month is easing inflation pressures. Consumer-price increases are still above the European Central Bank's limit, prompting policy makers including Axel Weber to indicate they are in no hurry to cut interest rates even as expansion slows.

“The euro-zone economic situation is deteriorating markedly,'' said Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING Group in Brussels. “Therefore, it is somewhat striking that some central bankers still consider interest rates to be accommodative.''

Economists had forecast that inflation would remain at 4 percent, a 16-year high, in August, according to the median estimate of 31 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. National data this week showed inflation in Germany, Europe's largest economy, Spain and Belgium eased this month.

European Bonds

The euro was up 0.2 percent to $1.4731 against the dollar as of 10:12 a.m. in London, having been as high as $1.4767 earlier. European bonds extended gains, with the yield on the German 1-year bund falling 4 basis points to 4.14 percent today. It's down 21 basis points since the start of the month cash advance.

The ECB, which aims to keep inflation just below 2 percent, raised its key interest rate to 4.25 percent on July 3, a seven- year high. While the central bank left the rate on hold this month, ECB Executive Board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi said in a Bloomberg Television interview broadcast today that inflation is “too high'' and must be brought below the bank's ceiling.

Still, most investors have pared bets on the ECB raising rates again as the economic outlook worsens, Eonia forward contracts show. The May contract yielded 4.15 percent today, down from 4.44 percent a month ago.

The 15-nation euro-area economy shrank in the second quarter while the region's manufacturing and service industries contracted in August. Factory orders in Germany have dropped for the past seven months.

Consumer Confidence

Confidence among euro-area manufacturers fell more than economists forecast to minus 10 this month from minus 8 in July, while sentiment among retailers also declined, according to today's report from the commission. Consumer confidence rose 1 point from July's minus 20, staying close to a 5 1/2-year low. In the U.K., consumer confidence stayed near a record low in August, GfK NOP said today in a separate report.

In the euro area, unemployment remained at 7.3 percent in July, another report showed.

European companies and consumers see less chance of prices rising, the data indicate. A measure of companies' selling-price expectations fell to 17 in August from 20 in July. Consumers' outlook for prices dropped to 22 from 30, below its average reading for the past 18 years.

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Visit Florida said it is introducing a $200,000 marketing campaign focused on luring tourists from the U.K. The announcement comes on the fourth day of Gov. Charlie Crist's ongoing trade mission to Europe.

"The United Kingdom has a long history of being one of Florida's largest overseas tourism markets, and it is important that we continue to reach out to this important market invite," Crist said in a news release.

For the new marketing campaign, Visit Florida will insert six, four-page special sections in First News, a children's publication in the U.K. The information in the independent newspaper will focus on Florida's ecosystem and environment, science and space programs, animals and wildlife, entertainment, sports and history. Additionally, Visit Florida will sponsor two issues of First News for Teachers, showing teachers the educational values of the special sections and offering suggestions on how they can use the information in the classroom cash advance loans.

The U.K. is Florida's top overseas tourism market, with 1.34 million arrivals in 2006. On average, British travelers spend nearly two weeks and $3,196 in Florida, with 72.5 percent traveling to Orlando, 15.3 percent to Miami and 12.5 percent to Tampa Bay.

Visit Florida is the state's official tourism marketing corporation.