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Wlady, I, too, admire Jennifer's energy -- wish I had some of it. And I acknowledge her expertise. I just think too much is too much.

I have done a web search to try to find the source of this observation (in vain), which I heard yesterday on NPR's "Marketplace." They were interviewing the chief economist from a large brokerage firm. He said that Fed intervention might or might not work, in the long term, but that the market itself would solve our ills quicker if there were no intervention.

He used the striking metaphor that we were "waiting for a body to float to the surface" -- like Long Term Capital Management in 1998. And he said he thought the Fed dropped this discount rate last Thursday evening because "somebody very high up" was concerned that "somebody very important" might go belly-up.

I told my wife that observation -- she's in finance -- and she said that that somebody very high up might well be European banks, which invested heavily in U.S. mortgage debt obligations.

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