Here is the howler printed yesterday, in reference to the prospect of bank nationalization: “This regime change refers to a change in the economic environment so radical that, at least for a while, economic policy makers will need to suspend what are usually sacred principles: minimal interference in free markets, gradualism and predictability.”
Incidentally, I asked a trader and economist at a major hedge fund to be blunt about all the Fed’s actions of late, and whether they have actually caused the meltdown to be far worse than it might have been under laissez-faire. He writes as follows: “We clearly would be better off long term. Short term it is so hard to argue counterfactuals but lately it seems like everything they do is akin to yelling fire in a crowded theater short term, and if they had just let bear go in January, further excesses in 2008 wouldn’t have built up. It took the heat off the banks to sell assets or raise capital as they figured there would be a lifeline from the government.”