Federal Reserve withdrawing liquidity from system

[DSieve]

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According to various media reports, the supposed experts threatened Congress with all sorts of terrible repercussions if the bailout was not passed immediately and without strings. From their public statements, our representatives have been told that failure to do so would result in an immediate end of credit, a stock market crash, massive layoffs and likely a new Great Depression. As regular readers here know, many of these consequences ARE likely but they do NOT stem from the lack of a bailout for Wall Street. They are the DIRECT result of the orgy of foolish lending that preceeded the bailout request. Paulson and Bernanke are using their control of information and the ignorance of the politicians to run a bluff. We are being threatened with consequences that are likely to come in any event and the bailout won't change that.

In many ways, the financial authorities are taking active measures to make the crisis worse. The Fed has been withdrawing liquidity from the financial system for over a week. According to the Slosh Report, system liquidity topped at $190 billion on 9/18 and fell to $110, $110, $90, $65, $63 and $59 billion on subsequent days. With the Fed deliberately cutting prior support, it's no wonder the short-term stress has become overwhelming. One result has been the largest bank failure in history (Washington Mutual) followed within days by a shotgun marriage to prevent an even larger one (Wachovia). The WaMu failure itself is quite interesting. The FDIC ALWAYS buries failed banks on a Friday, in order to give themselves time to sort the mess out over the weekend. We've gone back and checked and it's been true for many years. Yet the WaMu failure was announced on a Thursday, the day after the President unveiled the bailout proposal. The FDIC's timing on WaMu looks suspiciously like an attempt to rachet up the pressure on Congress - as does the Fed's withdrawal of liqidity support from the system.
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