Replies

IMHO, it is the JOB of the FED to prevent “runs” on banks caused by panicked depositors. So I am very pleased that the threatened “run” on Bear Stearns has now been stopped, without the FED having to print a single new dollar ( notwithstanding your ill-informed “comment” to the contrary).

America is still a free country, so you can be “nostalgic” for the 20%+ unemployment rates, the impoverishment of the middle class and the bread-lines of the Great Depression, if the prospect of a return to such misery is pleasing to you.

But I much prefer the “soft landing” that Bernanke seems to be pulling off, in spite of all the well-paid gloom-merchants who dominate the media.

And in spite of the moralistic bleating of people who could benefit from learning the difference between “adding liquidity” and “printing money”.

They would also do well to learn the difference between wishing ill on neighbors, and seeing what it actually does to themselves if it arrives. A $400 billion bankruptcy during a recession would not leave the carpers crowing about just deserts. It'd leave them in a soup line.

So I am very pleased that the threatened “run” on Bear Stearns has now been stopped, without the FED having to print a single new dollar ( notwithstanding your ill-informed “comment” to the contrary).

Every commentator on CNBC buisness news channel confirmed that today was a classic "run on the bank". Hell, the stockholder bid the stock down from about 55 to the mid-twenties ( I do not know where it closed, but it lost about half of its value).