From now on, any bank in a liquidity jam will be able to go directly to the Fed's discount window and trade in its hard-to-sell assets, such as mortgage bonds, as collateral for highly liquid government bonds or cash, which it can in turn use to fund its short-term liabilities and keep trading.
"The big news this week was not the Fed's 75 basis points on Tuesday," Doll said. "It was what they did with opening the discount window .... that's a huge change."
This week, the Fed cut the discount rate twice -- in an emergency move on Sunday night, when it unveiled JPMorgan's deal to buy Bear Stearns at the almost unthinkable price of $2 a share and again on Tuesday at its regular meeting.
On Wednesday, the federal government came up with another tonic for troubled times. The regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two biggest U.S. home financing arrangement, relaxed their capital rules and gave them permission to pump $200 billion more into the struggling U.S. mortgage market.
"The big news this week was not the Fed's 75 basis points on Tuesday," Doll said. "It was what they did with opening the discount window .... that's a huge change."
This week, the Fed cut the discount rate twice -- in an emergency move on Sunday night, when it unveiled JPMorgan's deal to buy Bear Stearns at the almost unthinkable price of $2 a share and again on Tuesday at its regular meeting.
On Wednesday, the federal government came up with another tonic for troubled times. The regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two biggest U.S. home financing arrangement, relaxed their capital rules and gave them permission to pump $200 billion more into the struggling U.S. mortgage market.

