Another Salvo

Battleship Ben fired another full broadside at the doom-mongers yesterday. All nine 16" guns let loose with well-aimed fire. The Fed will buy $300 billion of intermediate term Treasuries, up to another $750 billion of Fannie and Freddie mortgage-backed securities, and $200 billion of their debt. Big guns indeed. This should help keep intermediate term interest rates low as the Treasury funds its stimulus plan.

The move also ensures the frightened rich and institutions will receive little income from hiding in Treasury investments, instead of investing in the real economy. Good news all around.

BO continues to bloviate. Timmy tried to talk tough. {wow a five word alliteration !} Maybe I should give BO a more elevated nickname. How about the Bloviator? More buncombe from the Bloviator ?

Uh ... BO ... perhaps you should spend some time on staffing your administration instead of being a male cheerleader at a roving pep rally.

Markets

Another up day. I wonder when the bears will counterattack ? They rolled out Molotova in recent days, but her cocktails sputtered and died. Did her departure to run her own shop signal a bottom ? I wonder.

If Obama would perform as a President and not merely as the Bloviator, I'd say yes. But he is surely doing a poor job and his radical proposals on carbon credits, among others, might cause long term damage. Watching ...

Frauds

Blabberg reports that 33 million shares of LEH were sold short and NOT delivered. What a fraud! Hello SEC, are you there ? File some charges !

More ...

I see Lyndon aka W is writing about his decision as President. I wonder who will be the artist for that comic book ?

Word of the Day

"Repristinate" - verb, transitive [$10]; from the card file
Repristinate means to restore to an original state or condition.
Sentence: One cannot repristinate the economy to conditions of September 2008 to reform the TARP. Decisions had to be made under exigencies at once. From the current low LIBOR rates and the restored faith in money market funds, obviously the bulk of Hank the Tank's decisions did work as planned. Some mistakes were made, as we now see à propos AIG. Overall, Hank gets an A-. The '-' is for not delegating someone to check out AIG and stops its frauds.


Le Mot du Jour

Prêter - verb, regular -er conjugation
Prêter means 1. (transitive) a. to lend, b. to attribute, to ascribe, c. to give, to lend; (transitive indirect with à) to be open to, to lay oneself open to.
La Phrase: (from a headline in Le Monde today) La Fed prête à intervenir massivement sur les marchés.
Sentence: The Fed is open to intervening massively in the markets.