Forget rabbits. Programmes at the US Treasury seem to be multiplying faster than any small, furry critter could manage. Last week, the Treasury quietly posted a description of the "systemically significant failing institutions programme" on its website dedicated to all matters concerning the Emergency Economic Stabilisation Act. That is the legal grand-daddy of the Treasury's fast-growing litter, under which the troubled asset relief programme was brought into being.

In one sense, the Treasury's incessant breeding is simply the result of legal requirements to make promptly public the guidelines of its rescue missions. That does not, of course, make it any less confusing. The SSFIP, then, is the framework behind the restructuring aid to AIG, including a $40bn equity injection - official recognition that the insurer was too intertwined with its counterparties to fail. AIG did not qualify for help under the $250bn capital purchase programme, announced in October, which funnels funds to those (federally regulated) banks and thrifts deemed healthy. Thus another programme was born.