Friday, November 16, 2007

Interest rates and the Fed

The Fed funds sits at 4.5%, and the two year treasury trades at 3.37%, the CEO of Wells Fargo says housing is the worst since the great depression, and Fannie Mae, which was down another 10% yesterday, has a conference call today at 8:30 to explain their accounting? And you should be bullish?

The Fed, should have cut 50 basis points in their last meeting. They didn't. So the market did it for them. If the Fed waits until December 11 to cut again, they'll be further behind the curve. They should do a pre-emptive cut in the discount rate, like they did two months ago, on the Friday of option expiration.

The reason to be bullish is that, even bureaucrats eventually get it. The weakness and the spillover in the economy is a direct result of the weakness in housing, and the anecdote for weak housing is lower interest rates.

And rates are going lower than what the consensus currently predicts.

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