– The no naked shorts rule was finally enforced, but only for a privileged group of ailing financials.
– The Fed extended their emergency lending facility to January 2009.
– Cramer today was happily perky about how Citi could be a buy. (Sometimes he’s excellent. Other times, like this, he’s so obviously shilling that he makes a good contrary indicator.)
– FASB, as noted below, postponed the off-balance-sheet rule.
The jigsaw pieces are starting to fit. The government and big money are doing anything and everything they can to stave off what they clearly see as an impending, serious financial crisis (and not so coincidentally as a major threat to some fat cats.) But they’re doing in a deliberately opaque way that favors the wealthy over the economic well-being of the rest of us.
Damned if I didn’t think they were all die-hard capitalists. Didn’t they say they were? Let the strong kill the weak. Let the unhealthy die. That kind of thing. But now that the hunter has become the prey, they’re screaming protect me, bail me out, and I’m too important to let die.
This isn’t even state socialism. This is crony capitalism and an attempted theftocracy. But it won’t work. Those very same market forces they profess to believe in will, of course, prevail. (How could they not?) Look out below.