wiggles wednesday

sorry, old thread too big now

wiggles cos they've always got those blasted fingers pointing up, up, up and those awful perpetual mask like grins; I much prefer 'High 5' myself (specially georgie):-)

well, this is a welcome respite from the drearies but markets aren't out of the woods yet. Some new reports of ratings agency downgrades of mortgage related debt yet to come suggest, between the lines, that some usa banks could write down up to 94% of the value of those securities once they are downgraded, and that the effect on their liquidity ratios and hence capacity to lend would be little short of catastrophic. Its also interesting that the fed has injected $200 bill for 28 days at a time, when you recall that the next wave of writedowns was expected to come to about that figure, with another similar figure to come in the third wave (total $600 bill, including the first wave. Still, the fact that the fed is buying up mortgage related bonds is a good sign, even tho they have stopped short of actually buying them permanently. That step may yet come as the credit crunch persists and growth drops away and foreclosures increase again throughout 2008, and it will be the best thing. Inflation - well, expect a return to the gold standard after the elections and after usa mortgagees are rescued. imho