All Eyes Will Be Watching Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke
Posted on 03/17/2008 10:45:00 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Ping!
I think the Fed is part of the problem this time around, as is a certain former Fed chairman. They have overreached and panicked markets into a much worse situation than was coming if they had allowed the housing market to crash on its own stupidity. They’ve shot nearly every bolt they have. A 1% cut gives them, I believe, only 2.5% more to work with.
I’m going to trade my dollars in for pesos soon. I need a secure investment.
It would be hilarious if rates were actually raised or left unchanged. I can just see the panic.
Ambulances will be busy hauling collapsed traders from NYSE to hospitals.:-)
This is all just a bunch of political manipulation. They want a 2008 version of “It’s the economy, stupid.”
What’s the word on Asia this morning?
Is it possible to lower rates below zero?
Mixed. Nikkei up, others down, last I checked anyways.
I hope that the chicken littles here yesterday have learned something. People were on here yesterday predicting a four thousand point drop, etc, etc.
What we have here is a mess that’s working its way through the system. To use a crude but probably accurate analogy, lowering the rate by a percentage point is kind of like a laxative for the financial system. It’ll get everything flowing through again, and it’ll blast out what’s been accumulating.
What some of you are missing is that this hitting Bear Stearns and others is, in many ways, a good sign - so long as the Fed manages it correctly. That means that the trouble is working its way through the system. Debt is being repriced.
The Fed acted in exactly the correct way on this one. They stepped in to prevent a panic, but they also didn’t try and stop Bear Stearns from paying the price for its irresposible behaviour.
Most Asian indexes look pretty good, but Chinese ones are down quite a bit (between 4 and 8 percent down on various China indexes).
Don’t post any content from it (prior copyright complaint).
http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/stocks/wei_region3.html
That is, if the current interest rate is 2% and the current inflation rate is 3%, then the interest rate is effectively negative.
I agree with most of what you wrote — though I believe the situation is much more tricky than that. This is not smooth sailing by any means.
/sarcasm
All Eyes Will Be Watching Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke
While it may help the big banks, it will probably not translate into lower rates for consumers, and it certainly will translate into a more quckly falling dollar. The best reaction to this for normal people would be for people to move into an export related job.
Smooth sailing? No. But when is it ever?
Hillariously, the next step is the popping of the oil and gold bubbles. As much as I hate to say it, I’m going to enjoy watching the goldbugs here get what’s coming to them.
Smooth sailing? No. But when is it ever?
1950 to 1973 — a span of time that people oddly and naively believe was “normal.”
They'll all claim to have sold at the top.
yitbos
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