Jesus. Almost 1/2 of QE1. I wonder how much they are sweating this. What is the Fed's worst case scenario behind closed doors? I wonder if they understand the causes. The Financial Times basically said that the tax thing doesn't hold water. Maybe you are right, uhsguy. Maybe too many borrowers have bad milk, and banks aren't willing to hold them at the rate the Fed suggests.
You have to imagine that the order has come out that nobody big can be allowed to fail before the election but that’s over a year always and trying to prevent liquidation is going to dry up liquidity. The fed probably has mechanisms in place to do stealth bailouts but banks don’t magically become good just because they got bailed out.
There was a lot of strong-arming and sleight-of-hand in 2008. I'm not confident that the current crew has the backing and relationships to pull that shit off this time. I don't know what this is going to look like and I'm a little terrified that it's not really being talked about much.