To: Real Man who wrote (26024 ) 1/4/2010 12:26:06 PM From: ayn rand 2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 71456 Rather than fixing potential causes of the next disaster, the Obama Administration seems content to block the escape routes and issue priority passes to the big Wall Street banks and a favored few. "At this point it is without doubt that even the government understands that when things turn sour, and they will, the run on the bank will be unavoidable: their solution - prevent money from being dispensed, when that moment comes. The thing about crises, be they liquidity, solvency, or plain-vanilla, is that "price discovery" occurs all at once, and at the very same time. And all too often, investors "discover" they were lied to, as the emperor, in any fiat system, always has no clothes. Just like in September 2008, when the banks were forced to look at each-others' balance sheet and realize that there are no real assets on the left backing up the liabilities on the right, so the moment of enlightenment occurs are the most importune time: just ask Hank Paulson. Had he known his action of beefing up Goldman's FICC trading axes would have resulted in the "Ice-Nine'ing" (to borrow a Mark Pittman term) of money markets, who knows- maybe Lehman would have still been alive. Perhaps risking the cash access of 20% of US households and 80% of companies was not worth the few extra zeroes in Goldman's EPS. But we will never know. What we will know, is that now i) the government is all too aware that the market has become one huge ponzi, and that all investment vehicles, even the safest ones, are subject to bank runs, and ii) that said bank runs, will occur. It is only a matter of time. And just as the president told everyone directly to buy the market on March 3, so the SEC, the Group of 30, and Barney Frank are telling us all, much less directly, to get the hell out of Dodge. Alternatively, the game of "last fool in", holding the burning hot potato, can continue indefinitely, until such time as the marginal utility of each and every dollar printed by Ben Bernanke is zero." This Is the Government: Your Legal Right To Redeem Your Money Market Account Has Been Denied - ZeroHedge Stand your ground and wait. All is well. Someone has to take the big hit while the important people are transported to safety. The only constraint on the Fed's printing money is the acceptability (marginal value) of the Bond and the dollar, which is the bond of zero duration. And the people making the decisions about printing and distributing those dollars are more unworthy of holding such power than you might imagine, even in your lowest expectations. And if, even now, you do not 'get this' then the next ten years could be particularly disappointing. -Jesse