“Stands Ready To Take Additional Actions As Needed”

"Mr. Bernanke avoided any specific promise to lower the central bank’s benchmark federal funds rate ..."

We need a half-point cut.

We need it NOW.

I'm not KIDDING here, people ...

However, apparently Fed Chair Ben Bernanke did add that conditions are changing quickly enough that the Fed might act even before the next policy meeting on September 18th if the next batch of economic data still looks unfavorable.

You don't need to look at the next batch of economic data.

There are people out there that don't just have ARM's that adjust every couple of years.

There are people out there with mortgages that index to prime EVERY FLIPPING MONTH and prime is usually tied DIRECTLY to the Fed Funds Rate.

Not the flipping "discount rate".

Not "LIBOR".

Not a number you randomly pulled out your kazoo.

Fed f*ck*ng Funds.

For all intents an purposes, Mr. Bernanke, your agency, the Federal Reserve, is lending money to millions of people for their ONLY SHELTER, and, until the President and the Congress and the mortgage industry can straighten out this unholy MESS they have gotten all of us into, quite frankly only YOU can prevent a STAGGERING number of people from missing payments, leading to the inevitable credit score reductions, leading to the inevitable foreclosures and people becomming unemployable because, yes, more and more employers are checking credit ratings.

The President was quoted yesterday as saying, “It’s not the government’s job to bail out speculators, or those who made the decision to buy a home they knew they could never afford.”

No, the BANKS and MORTGAGE COMPANIES let people buy homes they could never afford.

How could some of the products that were being offered a few years ago even be LEGAL??

Of course, in an ideal world, you'd hang the speculators out to dry. These rich S.O.B.'s who were investing heavily in hedge funds that were buying up variable rate mortgages like there was no tomorrow deserve to lose their shirts. They deserve to be incarcerated and executed. It's like giving a four-year-old a toy and then yanking it back from him.

However, in this case, the results of the hedge fund investors' poor decisions is that certain people left REALLY f*ck*ng nice apartments where EVERYTHING was taken care of and invested in sh*tty g*dd*mn real estate that needed SO f*ck*ng much work that they had to both tap out home equity lines of credit AND credit cards just to make the f*ck*ng place LIVEABLE.

I tell you what - if we're going to have a Federal Reserve that is constantly d*ck*ng with the market anyway, they need to set MULTIPLE rates.

If the economy is overheating, they need to cut back on money going into COMMERCIAL PAPER and that sort off stuff.

However, at the same time, if you clearly have a mortgage crisis going on due to STUPIDITY and people FALLING ASLEEP AT THE SWITCH, the LEAST you could do is pump enough money DIRECTLY into mortgages in order to get them into a manageable level.

Yes, Mr. Bernanke, you need to directly lend ME enough to pay off my second mortage.

You need to lend me that money at 6% amortized over 40 years.

I'm straight up serious.

Bypass the banks. Bypass the mortgage companies. *I* am the one who needs the money.

Because, believe you me, you do NOT want me getting put out on the street becasue I may have to come bunk with YOU for a number of YEARS and I can assure you I make a lousy house guest ... :)



Related:
Bush’s FHA Plan May Only Reach 10 Percent of At-Risk Subprime Borrowers - Housingwire
Treasury Three-Month Bill Yields Fall Most Since 2001 on Credit - Bloomberg