Sunday, July 26, 2009

Op-Ed Contributor - The Great Preventer - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Contributor - The Great Preventer - NYTimes.com:

Interesting piece. I am not sure whether stating that a person was actively complicit in the creation of a disaster and then participated in the rescue from the abyss is the soundest argument to make the case for them to be REWARDED. The opposing piece by Anna Jacobson Schwartz seems more coherently argumented.

Precisely with respect to BICs, when Roubini recalls that "The Fed even committed to purchasing up to $1.7 trillion of Treasury bonds, mortgage-backed securities and agency debt to reduce market rates." it once more makes me thing how much most cost-efficiently the fed could have controlled long term rates with interest rate BICs that replicate the whole curve.

I argue that the Fed making markets on interest rate BICs should be a major aspect of needed reforms at the Fed. Indeed in the 2003-2006 period, the fed had a hard time curbing the speculative bubble in the real estate market because acting only on overnight lending rates, it could not control long term rates that determine mortgage rates.

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