Fed Approves Reduction In Discount Rate - washingtonpost.com

I guess Bernake is making a put. Not necessarily the smartest thing I've seen. He should have let the market shake itself out for another day or two.

There are two reasons that this scares me. First, are things are far worse than reported? Even a quarter point move would have bounced markets, but why is he cutting rates by a half point?

As my friend says, When in doubt, stay out.

Chicken Little’s Brethren, on the Trading Floor - New York Times

The reason that things are so bad on Wall Street come from sub-prime loans. Stein is right, the sub-prime loan market is relatively small when compared to anything else, however the problem is that the risks were not clear to investors for the derivatives of the loans. I'm talking about the slicing of these loans and repackaging of them with other debt. A lot of that stuff has been priced out, but the consequence was the ups and downs that we had on the market yesterday.

It's this repricing of this debt that has folks jittery. Why would that be? There's plenty of money out there, this debt is relatively small. As I understand it, the problem is that the packages of the debt that included subprime loans were bought with even more debt. As people call in the new debt, there's no one to sell the old debt to. That's the reason why things are shaky and that banks in Germany have to bail out one of its brethren. Mallaby's column makes a better case for what's really happening versus Stein's Pollyannaish predictions.

Primary Season Getting Earlier - washingtonpost.com

What happens if and when something happens to the nominee. Since the gap between the primaries and the nominating conventions are spreading out. I wonder if we have a nominee by 5 February; what happens if there is some sort of scandal (ala Ryan in Senator's race in IL) or some sort of medical tragedy. What's the contingency plan? Do you renominate someone? Go through the primaries again? Pick who came in second? Smoky back room decision? It would be good to know this.

Once Tainted, Nardelli Now Has Chrysler’s Keys - New York Times

I hope this works out. Nardelli will get to prove his worth and Cerebus was smart enough to pay him that way. I didn't know about the Dodge/Nardelli angle and that's heartening. I hope I'm wrong, but I'd give him three years and out.

Wall Street's Lucrative Tax Break Is Under Fire - washingtonpost.com

Do we agree that the government needs to raise money? If so who should government tax? Poor people, rich people, dead people, trade? It is outrageous that that average workers get taxed at such a higher rate. I wonder if those flat taxers would want to take on teh "Carry" too.