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Woodburn Police Chief Scott Russell was listed in critical condition at Oregon Health and Science University Hospital, according to hospital spokeswoman Christine Decker.

The name of the slain police officer has not yet been released. There was no immediate word on the bomb tech’s identity or condition.

The three were investigating a suspicious device at a West Coast Bank branch when the bomb went off, police said. Police had brought the device inside after it was discovered outside, bank president Bob Sznewajs told CNN.

Sznewajs said that two bank employees who were in another part of the bank when the bomb exploded suffered very minor injuries, one who may have been hit by some flying debris and another who was “bothered by the sound.”

“I know that all of our employees are fine,” Sznewajs said, adding that none of his employees had been allowed back into the front portion of the building, where the bomb exploded, “so we don’t know what it’s like in there.”

“I heard a loud kaboom,” Robert Currie, who was across the street, told CNN affiliate KATU. “Well, I’m a Vietnam veteran and that was no gunshot — that was definitely a bomb. So I come running outside to see what was going on and the interior lights of the bank are all out. And the next thing, it’s just swarming with police cars, two fire trucks and three or four ambulances.”

Several emergency vehicles surrounded the building, according to news video from the scene, but the exterior of the building did not appear damaged.

Sznewajs said police were called to investigate a suspicious package Friday afternoon. Police gave the all clear, Sznewajs said, but a bank employee saw something in a bush outside the bank, and police were called back.

Sznewajs said he was not at the bank at the time of the incident, but he said his employees told him authorities “scanned it outside, then brought it in.”

His employees had left the front of the building by that point, Sznewajs said, and it was not clear why the device was taken into the building.

Sznewajs said there were “four or five” employees in the bank when the incident began and approximately the same number of customers. None were in the front of the bank when the explosion took place.

Earlier Friday, police investigated a bomb threat called into a nearby Wells Fargo Bank branch but found nothing, Wells Fargo spokesman Tom Unger said. The call came in before 10:30 a.m., Unger said, and the branch closed at 2 p.m.

The Wells branch and the West Coast branch are less than 150 feet apart.

Where the discussion isn’t going, at least in public, (or the PR level), is the possibility that the first foreign policy crisis the administration will face will be the complete economic collapse of a large, unstable nation. To be sure, Pakistan is nearly broke, and U.S. policy makers seem to be aware of that; but a worldwide demand crisis could lead to social unrest in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, Singapore, the Ukraine, Japan, Turkey or Egypt (which is facing an internal political crisis of epic proportions already). The U.S. won’t have the resources to, say, engineer the rescue of the peso again, or intervene in Asia as in 1997.

Even an offer by the Treasury Department today to provide temporary relief, after the Senate rejected a bailout plan approved by the House, isn’t likely to offset the Dec. 10 announcement that GM’s 49 percent-owned affiliate, GMAC LLC, lacked the capital to become a bank holding company. That means the financing unit won’t be able to access Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program to help make auto loans.

GMAC may now have to file for Chapter 11 protection, with or without a loan, joining GM’s biggest parts supplier, Delphi Corp., which is already in bankruptcy. The Detroit-based automaker, leaking $67 million a day — enough to buy a fleet of 1,800 Cadillac CTS coupes — may soon be sucked into the vortex.

“GM already is bankrupt and should file for bankruptcy,” said David Littman, senior economist for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a policy research organization in Midland, Michigan. “They have too much overhead and too little time left to reduce size to be a survivor in this industry.”

“Because Congress failed to act, we will stand ready to prevent an imminent failure until Congress reconvenes and acts to address the long-term viability of the industry,” Treasury spokeswoman Brookly McLaughlin said.

The announcement came shortly after the White House said it would consider tapping a 700-billion-dollar financial rescue fund administered by the Treasury “to prevent a collapse of troubled automakers” after lawmakers failed to pass an alternative.

“Given the current weakened state of the US economy, we will consider other options if necessary — including use of the TARP program — to prevent a collapse of troubled automakers,” said spokeswoman Dana Perino, referring to the Troubled Asset Relief Program conceived to help financial services firms.

A 14-billion-dollar auto bailout effort collapsed in the US Senate late Thursday.

The House of Representatives on Wednesday had approved the White House-backed bill, crafted by Democrats, to rescue the ailing automakers.

Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed responded Dec. 8, saying it’s allowed to withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information. The institution confirmed that a records search found 231 pages of documents pertaining to some of the requests.

“If they told us what they held, we would know the potential losses that the government may take and that’s what they don’t want us to know,” said Carlos Mendez, who oversees about $14 billion at New York-based ICP Capital LLC.

Bloomberg News is a unit of New York-based Bloomberg LP.

The Fed stepped into a rescue role that was the original purpose of the Treasury’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. The central bank loans don’t have the oversight safeguards that Congress imposed upon the TARP.

Total Fed lending exceeded $2 trillion for the first time Nov. 6. It rose by 138 percent, or $1.23 trillion, in the 12 weeks since Sept. 14, when central bank governors relaxed collateral standards to accept securities that weren’t rated AAA.

‘Been Bamboozled’

Congress is demanding more transparency from the Fed and Treasury on the bailout efforts, most recently during Dec. 10 hearings by the House Financial Services committee when Representative David Scott, a Georgia Democrat, said Americans had “been bamboozled.”

In its response to Bloomberg’s request, the Fed said the U.S. is facing “an unprecedented crisis” when the “loss in confidence in and between financial institutions can occur with lightning speed and devastating effects.”

The Fed supplied copies of three e-mails in response to a request that it disclose the identities of those supplying data on collateral as well as their contracts.

While the senders and recipients of the messages were revealed, the contents were erased except for two phrases identifying a vendor as “IDC.” One of the e-mails’ subject lines refers to “Interactive Data — Auction Rate Security Advisory May 1, 2008.”

‘Multiple Harms’

Brian Willinsky, a spokesman for Bedford, Massachusetts- based Interactive Data Corp., a seller of fixed-income securities information, declined to comment.

“Notwithstanding calls for enhanced transparency, the Board must protect against the substantial, multiple harms that might result from disclosure,” Jennifer J. Johnson, the secretary for the Fed’s Board of Governors, said in a letter e-mailed to Bloomberg News.

“In its considered judgment and in view of current circumstances, it would be a dangerous step to release this otherwise confidential information,” she wrote.

New York-based Citigroup Inc., which is shrinking its global workforce of 352,000 through asset sales and job cuts, is among the nine biggest banks receiving $125 billion in capital from the TARP since it was signed into law Oct. 3. More than 170 regional lenders are seeking an additional $74 billion.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system.

‘Right to Know’

The Freedom of Information Act requires federal agencies to make government documents available to the press and the public. The suit, filed in New York, doesn’t seek money damages.

“There has to be something they can tell the public because we have a right to know what they are doing,” said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington, Virginia-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “It would really be a shame if we have to find this out 10 years from now after some really nasty class-action suit and our financial system has completely collapsed.”

The Fed lent cash and government bonds to banks that handed over collateral including stocks and subprime and structured securities such as collateralized debt obligations, according to the Fed Web site.

Borrowers include the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Citigroup and New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co., the country’s biggest bank by assets.

Banks oppose any release of information because that might signal weakness and spur short-selling or a run by depositors, Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs for the Financial Services Roundtable, a Washington trade group, said in an interview last month.

‘Complete Truth’

“Americans don’t want to get blindsided anymore,” Mendez said in an interview. “They don’t want it sugarcoated or whitewashed. They want the complete truth. The truth is we can’t take all the pain right now.”

The Bloomberg lawsuit said that the collateral lists “are central to understanding and assessing the government’s response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression.”

In response, the Fed argued that the trade-secret exemption could be expanded to include potential harm to any of the central bank’s customers, said Bruce Johnson, a lawyer at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in Seattle. That expansion is not contained in the freedom-of-information law, Johnson said.

“I understand where they are coming from bureaucratically, but that means it’s all the more necessary for taxpayers to know what exactly is going on because of all the money that is being hurled at the banking system,” Johnson said.

The former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market is best known as the founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, the closely-held market-making firm he launched in 1960. But he also ran a hedge fund that U.S. prosecutors said racked up $50 billion of fraudulent losses.

Madoff told senior employees of his firm on Wednesday that “it’s all just one big lie” and that it was “basically, a giant Ponzi scheme”, with estimated investor losses of about $50 billion, according to the U.S. Attorney’s criminal complaint against him.

A Ponzi scheme is a swindle offering unusually high returns, with early investors paid off with money from later investors.

On Thursday, two agents for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation entered Madoff’s New York apartment.

“There is no innocent explanation,” Madoff said, according to the criminal complaint. He told the agents that it was all his fault, and that he “paid investors with money that wasn’t there”, according to the complaint.

The $50 billion allegedly lost would make the hedge fund one of the biggest frauds in history. When former energy trading giant Enron filed for bankruptcy in 2001, one of the largest at the time, it had $63.4 billion in assets.

U.S. prosecutors charged Madoff, 70, with a single count of securities fraud. They said he faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $5 million.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed separate civil charges against Madoff.

“Our complaint alleges a stunning fraud — both in terms of scope and duration,” said Scott Friestad, the SEC’s deputy enforcer. “We are moving quickly and decisively to stop the scheme and protect the remaining assets for investors.”

Dan Horwitz, Madoff’s lawyer, told reporters outside a downtown Manhattan courtroom where he was charged, “Bernard Madoff is a longstanding leader in the financial services industry. We will fight to get through this unfortunate set of events.”

A shaken Madoff stared at the ground as reporters peppered him with questions. He was released after posting a $10 million bond secured by his Manhattan apartment.

Authorities, citing a document filed by Madoff with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Jan. 7, 2008, said Madoff’s investment advisory business served between 11 and 25 clients and had a total of about $17.1 billion in assets under management. Those clients may have included other funds that in turn had many investors.

The SEC said it appeared that virtually all of the assets of his hedge fund business were missing.

CONSISTENT RETURNS

An investor in the hedge fund said it generated consistent returns, which was part of the attraction. Since 2004, annual returns averaged around 8 percent and ranged from 7.3 percent to 9 percent, but last decade returns were typically in the low-double digits, the investor said.

The fund told investors it followed a “split strike conversion” strategy, which entailed owning stock and buying and selling options to limit downside risk, said the investor, who requested anonymity.

Jon Najarian, an acquaintance of Madoff who has traded options for decades, said “Many of us questioned how that strategy could generate those kinds of returns so consistently.”

Najarian, co-founder of optionmonster.com, once tried to buy what was then the Cincinnati Stock Exchange when Madoff was a major seatholder on the exchange. Najarian met with Madoff, who rejected his bid.

“He always seemed to be a straight shooter. I was shocked by this news,” Najarian said.

‘LOCK AND KEY’

Madoff had long kept the financial statements for his hedge fund business under “lock and key,” according to prosecutors, and was “cryptic” about the firm. The hedge fund business was located on a separate floor from the market-making business.

Madoff has been conducting a Ponzi scheme since at least 2005, the U.S. said. Around the first week of December, Madoff told a senior employee that hedge fund clients had requested about $7 billion of their money back, and that he was struggling to pay them.

Investors have been pulling money out of hedge funds, even those performing well, in an effort to reduce risk in their portfolios as the global economy weakens.

The fraud alleged here could further encourage investors to pull money from hedge funds.

“This is a major blow to confidence that is already shattered — anyone on the fence will probably try to take their money out,” said Doug Kass, president of hedge fund Seabreeze Partners Management. Kass noted that investors that put in requests to withdraw their money can subsequently decide to leave it in the fund if they wish.

Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities has more than $700 million in capital, according to its website.

Madoff remains a member of Nasdaq OMX Group Inc’s nominating committee, and his firm is a market maker for about 350 Nasdaq stocks, including Apple, EBay and Dell according to the website.

The website also states that Madoff himself has “a personal interest in maintaining the unblemished record of value, fair-dealing, and high ethical standards that has always been the firm’s hallmark.”

The cuts could affect as much as 11.4 percent of the combined companies’ workforce of about 308,000 people, and are intended to help save $7 billion of annual costs.

Bank of America said the cuts will come from both companies and affect all business lines, and in part reflect “the weak economic environment, which is affecting the level of business activity.”

The Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank said it won’t determine the final number of cuts until early 2009, and that as many as possible will come through attrition.

Bank of America employs about 247,000 people and Merrill about 61,000. The merger values Merrill at about $20.5 billion and is expected to close on January 1, 2009, creating the largest U.S. bank by assets.

Financial companies have announced more than 250,000 job cuts this year, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc, as losses soared from mortgages, credit cards and securities write-downs.

Bank of America announced its cuts less than four weeks after Citigroup Inc set plans to eliminate 52,000 jobs, or 15 percent of its workforce, by early 2009.

“If you asked me six months ago I would be surprised, but in this day and age, it doesn’t look as draconian, especially compared with what Citigroup did,” said Howard Diamond, chief executive of Diamond Consultants, a Chester, New Jersey, recruiter.

Other financial companies to cut jobs in recent months include Goldman Sachs Group Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Morgan Stanley. Bank of America previously said it would cut 7,500 jobs following the July 1 purchase of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp.

Bank of America spokesman Scott Silvestri said the bank would not elaborate on where the latest job cuts will come from, how many might come from attrition, or where the banks’ business activity had been hurt.

One recruiter said attrition could account for most of the announced job cuts, and that more cuts may be needed to make Bank of America more competitive.

Speaking by teleconference at the Reuters Investment Outlook 2009 Summit, the co-founder with George Soros of the Quantum Fund, said the government’s $700 billion rescue package for the sector doesn’t address how banks manage their balance sheets, and instead rewards weaker lenders with new capital.

Dozens of banks have won infusions from the Troubled Asset Relief Program created in early October, just after the Sept 15 bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Some of the funds are being used for acquisitions.

“Without giving specific names, most of the significant American banks, the larger banks, are bankrupt, totally bankrupt,” said Rogers, who is now a private investor.