Instead of Bush coming on TV with his bumbling "everything is great, the economy is healthy, and oh by the way don't worry about the Fed panicking just go out and spend your checks, yuck, yuck" I wish someone who understood the frigging banking system would go on CSpan and explain in detail what the maximumn extent of the losses could realistically be. The reason you don't find this information anywhere is that no one really knows and that is the scary part. Even those who are deeply involved with the crisis can only guess. WP who ponied up $500 M for MBIA after thinking that they knew all the risks did so at $31, now they just added more at $12 and change! What the system lacks right now is any kind of transparency and until we get that we will just swing this way and that with the daily emotions that the latest news provokes. Bush, Bernanke, and Pauslon, get your heads out your asses and get us some friggin solid numbers, then you won't have to run around giving out money for people to blow on useless shit and the Fed won't have to loose all sense of fiscal constraint. If the market has some solid numbers to work with the market will be able to sort things out very efficiently without panicky government intervention that in the long run willlikely hurt more than it will help. So what is it ET? Do they know and they are afraid of the consequences of telling us or do they just not have a clue? Until we get some real numbers anything between a quick day trade and a very long terms investment is just gambling. No wonder liquidity has dried up, most people don't want to gamble with billions of $.
They are just playing a game, and until the game breaks(economy collapses), they will continue to play with our money and lives and keep most of the public content with false numbers and a controlled media.
Sorry I don't subscribe to that theory of the markets, sure there is some fufdging of government numbers but by and large the market is efficient with the information it has. Put another way suggesting the market is being gamed assumes that some entity knows what they are doing and is manipulating things, this feels very much like the game has spun out of control.