Quote from wjk:
Is the fed playing the market, or the economy?
Every once in awhile I play some XBOX with my young son. We are currently deep into The Force Unleashed, a new Lucas Arts title.
The character has a force power energy bar, which gets zapped as you apply a Jedi or Sith force power. It will get drained down to (zero) and the after a short time it will recover to full force. You only hope the recovery is quick enough for your next evil combatant.
The actions by the Fed and Treasury strike me as a similar action. Since this time last year, they have been hitting the $$$ FORCE button at various times, to support market declines after bad news. They no doubt hope that the market recovers just enough, so they can hit the FORCE button yet again when the next bad news cycle arrives.
One might expand on the analogy and notice there are other $$$ FORCE capable parties playing in the game, which are applying their skills to attack parts of the market.
You end up with SEC putting in a no-shorting CHEAT CODE to disable the $$$ FORCE powers of some of the evil Empire gamers.
Eventually they are going to have to decide if they are going to rescue the hostages and fight the Emperor, or sacrifice the hostages to do battle with Lord Vader... but I digress...
I hope you enjoyed the diversion.
PS... May the $$$ FORCE be with you.
