Last month I credited Senator Harry Reid with making a candidly honest comment regarding the financial sector meltdown:
“No one knows what to do. We are in new territory here. This is a different game. We’re not here playing soccer, basketball or football, this is a new game and we’re going to have to figure out how to do it.”
Since then it’s become apparent that no one–not Congress, not the White House, not the Department of the Treasury, or the Federal Reserve–has a handle on the problem.
The most recent evidence of this is the Fed’s announcement that it will inject capital into banks. This, as the Daily Show notes, comes just a couple weeks after Secretary Paulson dismissed that idea.
So after all of that Capitol Hill brouhaha regarding the huge bailout bill, we’ve basically been told after just a few days, “Never mind, that idea was off-track anyway. We’ve got a new plan.”
Another way policymakers have gingerly discussed this concept is to talk of giving the Fed “a wide array of tools at its disposal.” In other words, if we give enough things to try, perhaps it will eventually discover the correct wrench.
What’s emerged is a picture of governments and central banks ad libbing because they don’t have a handle on the problem. This weeks’ market exuberance notwithstanding, I still don’t think they do. Credit market indicators are still at distressed levels. And in the bigger picture, the economy is getting worse, not better. So I think the stock markets are ultimately headed down–likely breaking through last week’s lows.