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Showing posts from December 5, 2007

Economic stuff

Business Times - 06 Dec 2007 Does the 'Bernanke put' matter any more? Critics argue that financial bailout policies encourage risky lending in the future By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT IS IT fair to suggest that the US central bank is predisposed to 'bail out' the financial markets? That is what critics of the Fed have charged, pointing out to predictable expansionary policy adjustments in response to pressures from investors worried about the diminishing value of their assets. And these measures have been named after the chairmen of the US Federal Reserve - thus the 'Greenspan put' or the 'Bernanke put'. The critics have argued that such policies have amounted to a 'moral hazard'; the argument being that financial bailouts encourage risky lending in the future, if those that take the risks come to believe that they will not have to carry the full burden of losses. William Poole, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, in an ad