17 August 2007

More on Yesterday's Stock Meltdown

I commented on it briefly, and the stocks recovered, the Murdoch Dow ending down only 15 points, after being down more than 300 points.

Well, now I know why: the Fed cut the discount rate by 50 basis points. An surprise half a percent rate cut has a way of getting people to buy stocks.

I don't think that it will mean much in the long term. As Nouriel Roubini says, "Given the serious insolvency - rather than just illiquidity- among many economic agents (many mortgage-burdened households, dozens of mortgage lenders, homebuilders, some hedge funds and financial institutions, some distressed corporates) a formal 25bps cut will not make much of the difference as you cannot solve an insolvency problem by throwing liquidity at it."

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