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October 10, 2008
Posted: 916 GMT

LONDON, England — It pains me to remind Todd Benjamin, but last year when the credit markets first seized in August, he was AGAINST any immediate cuts in interest rates.  He was AGAINST any co-ordinated response.  And he was AGAINST anything that smacked of recognizing the fact that urgent action needed to be taken then! He didn’t believe in using monetary policy to bail out the market.

I am not saying a cut would have done the deed, but I do believe, as I said then, that an element of urgency was required.

Todd?

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Filed under: Business • Financial markets


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Ashwin Ramcharan   October 10th, 2008 928 GMT

I think you guys don’t get it. Lets go back to Darwin.

What we see is the result of the greed instinct embedded in human beings. When we were living in caves we gathered as much nuts as we could, through exercising greed.

Now some dominant Alpha males have been gathering money instead of nuts to the extend that, through governance manipulations, they have broken the system of healthy greed.

Greed has a function in human beings, greed is here to stay, greed is good, greed is what we need it to survive!

Ashwin Ramcharan

C Rodrigues India   October 10th, 2008 930 GMT

Hi Richard read this blog http://anilselarka.wordpress.com/
He had called the current crisis to the nuts and bolts and is playing out exactly the way he said it would 12 months back.
He has given some radical solution and are dramatically different from what is being talked about by everyone.
Regards

Matthew Laino   October 10th, 2008 1010 GMT

Surely if we’d have cut rates 12 months ago we would be dealing with inflation at double the rate it has been recently. The problem is that our great leaders have managed the economies like idiots. If we’d have been in a stable enough position to cut rates then surely it would have been the logical thing to do. But at the end of the day it boils down to effective regulation.

TOPE FASUA   October 10th, 2008 1027 GMT

Hi Mr QUESTY!!!

Never knew you were such an ardent financial analyst!!! In fact we missed you quite a bit from the airwaves until you made a big come back. Todd was probably wrong and is still wrong in proposing ‘NATIONALISATION’ of banks by the US government. The bankers had a free ride, they overstretched the market. Even teacher of derivatives will tell you that this is a bubble waiting to burst with immense effect.

This is how it works. Sharp banker walk in straight from Harvard, he gets all the rave management reviews in every important magazine, he concocts all sorts of financial structures, takes his share of the profits upfront, and is out the door to another bank. The structure collapses later and is another man’s problem. Now its everybody’s problem and we are asking that hapless taxpayers’ money be pumped in? Its the same here in Nigeria too. Pathetic! You were right in calling for urgent action. But in what regards? Marked to market accounting in my understanding presupposes that people should bring back the profits (variation margin), that they may have taken upfront. The whole world is deliberately ignoring the fact that the bankers should bring back the booty. Nice to see you Richard!!

Bert Smeets   October 10th, 2008 1042 GMT

How can you trust a marriage that just is broken. Trust anything, even this old system of love!
Just to fix the relation is to fix yourself too, seeing what kind a creepy bastard you were making all those deals. Now to find love and trust again, try to renew the colors of the diamond.

murat   October 10th, 2008 1326 GMT

man all kinds of world leaders did nothing about this, thew knew but did nothing. you can say for inflation reasons, you can say that they are just stupid. i say that this is just a way to nationalize the economy, al these banks that are being bailded, everybody knows that when they cant pay the goverment back the governements gonna take over these banks, and thats not if but when that happens. you may ask why? well more money government less money civillians, you know al for money, like the war on terrorism hahaha, the west has dirty ways to enforce there will, just lke now, i remeber bush saying some months ago that the economy was really healthy, just like he said that irak had weapons of mass destrcution, they wanna make dependent of the governement, its the new word order people, start believing and then start fighting it before you leave this world to your kids and grandchildren. if micheal moore of aaron russi( to bad he passed away) was a leader we would not be iN such situations with the economy, with our fellow people etc. THIS IS AL PLANNED!!!!!!!!

Joe Smith   October 10th, 2008 1423 GMT

This is something that has been coming down the pipe for a long time. One thing that is funny that no one brings up is….. CREDIT CARDS. How come the credit card companies are not at fault?

Look at this…………… If you make $50, 000 a year and are spending $150,000.00 a year……. at what point are you going to catch up and pay this back? People have been living way beyond there means, EVERYONE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you want to really address the problem…………. this is were you start…..if you owe more than $20,000.00 in credit card bills………. you are cut off from using your credit card till you are paid up. If you owe more, then you really need to see a debt consolidator. It sucks but it has to be done. This can not be argued over. We have built this country on credit, nothing is paid for……………its a FALSE economy.

There is NO ACCOUNTABILITY, its always someone else’s fault

Wagner Antunes   October 10th, 2008 1553 GMT

Well, if really they say that money in International Bank System has guarantee, limited, but guarentee, only way out to finish that it is follow Moscow solution. All World Stock Exchanges closed for 15 days or 30 days in holidays and let real economy to say what is roth or not. When starting again losers and winners will be finnally for long time decided with big moves to up from good ones. After that a long time quite flat market will be seen, reconstrution time with less speculation. Many can be ruinned on that way, but positevely for his own actions and it will be much more healthy that this rally that only strengh speculation that is going too deep in good values contamination

Mehmet Kurtkaya   October 10th, 2008 1701 GMT

Todd was right and given the fact that there are still many more trillions to delevarage, any rate cut, even to zero would have no real effect.

This is a corrupt economy and rate cuts would simply keep the game going for a little more and with even more dire consequences down the road.

What is happening now is restructuring of societies. This has to happen. Who does what and how s/he is compensated. As basic as this.

Not many people believed in this fairy tale but kept their mouth shut as long as they beneffied from it. That’s why the fear got in so quickly as many knew the king was naked but only now the crowds are chanting it. People around the world vote markets out and goverments in. This is the real election.

They are putting their money where reality seems. Funny thing though, governments are equally corrupt as they were bought by the markets long ago :) Recognizing the need for social change is the number one issue for people in the next decade.

Charlie Fancutt   October 10th, 2008 1931 GMT

Dear Richard and Todd and CNN Business in general for some interesting and intelligent TV. I enjoy hearing different views, guests offering different ideas (loved the to and fro between Richard and that free market advocate from Singapore) and the occasional ‘biff” between different presenters that this inevitably leads to.

I have been traveling in South America for weeks and CNN is my news lifeline. I was very frustrated, angry and bored the whole week after the first bailout vote when I only got on CNN a total one sided pro-bailout (in frustration I ended up mostly watching BBC world where they did give some air time to the anti-bailout and unlike CNN interviewed anti-bailout members on congress.). I would have liked to have heard your talented business presenters who seemed totally pro-bailout arguing the case with these anti-bailout advocates and discussing alternative plans.

But this week you have done an awesome job!

Uma in Liverpool, UK   October 11th, 2008 629 GMT

Dear Mr Quest,

Our dear Mr Benjamin had ample company. Indeed, you were probably the one chicken-little, who was right, to whom anyone would pay ATTENTION, in the British Isles.

Or possibly Europe.

Make that the Northern Hemisphere.

My working-class friends and those of us on Benefits saw this coming the moment Northern Rock had to be nationalised, and the price of Weetabix, and water, and everything, quadrupled overnight.

Incidentally, are you and Mr Benjamin running for President of the United States? If not, is there any particular reason for this McCain-esque finger-pointing?

Anxiously awaiting Mr Benjamin’s counter-advert…

Uma
I don’t worry about my finances, in the sense that I haven’t any. Strictly hand-to-mouth, here.

tr   October 11th, 2008 1455 GMT

This whole mess has been created (starting with Reagen) and with one sole purpose…..the Amero and one world currency. The Amero’s been minted and ready to replace the dying dollar.
The G7 conversation over this weekend will bring nothing of any value to the markets. So, hold on, this coming week will be MUCH worse than last week.
The Amero will be unveiled as soon as the dollar completely flat-lines. (Within months) Just in time for the new guy in office.
The next meeting will establish how they will get a handle on the fallout of a current misdirected and duped American citizenry…….when they wake up to find everything they own, gone.
And a whole new world, Oh, my, will begin
Why isn’t CNN reporting on this? One can see the newly minted, silver backed Amero on youtube. Why isn’t main stream media reporting on this?
What’s the deal Mr. Quest?

FromEuroZone   October 11th, 2008 2046 GMT

If hindsight was worth something, everyone would make a killing in the market.

Besides, what could have done? If the co-ordinated rescue plan would have been done last year, the entire credit crunch would have prevented, that much is probably true.

But in all reality, there was no chance the plan would have been approved by anyone in the government back then. Dow was 13′000+, the mortgage crisis seemed to be burning out with write downs and some red faces among the big banking CEOs and lending among banks seemed temporary problem at the worst. On the whole few loses, few banks with few dollars off their share-values.

If anyone, absolutely anyone, had gone in front of Congress back then and asked $700 bn to buy bad assets of the market so banks lending to each other wasn’t interrupted, he would not have been thrown out, he would have been carted off to the funny farm.

Only thing I consider a mistake, or possibly a poor timing, was the tax rebate. That would be so much more effective right now, when holiday season is ahead of us. But again, the expensive fuel back then made it seem like a good idea from political point of view.

Still, it should have been obvious that the holiday season is the best moment to flush the consumer with cash and I doubt there is will to do it twice, no matter how good the idea seems right now. There are always those ‘It didn’t work first time, it won’t work now’ - voices.

Stephan Jaeckel   October 13th, 2008 1902 GMT

Yes, there was an urgent need to do something Mr. Quest, not only in August last year but long before that.

Rating Agencies, Banks, Monoliners, Mortgage and Loan Companies, Brokers basically ALL participants in the financial markets would have had to change their course and behaviour long time ago to save the world economy. Of course they did not do so and put their shortsighted quaterly interests before anything else. Now everyone feels where they got us.

No cut in interest rates would have changed the behaviour shown, it would just have fueled greed and forced more and more of what got the world in deep troubles.

If anything might have saved us from todays troubles back in August then it would have been a change in laws and rules for financial markets all over the world in order to force a change in the way all participants in the financial markets act.

For that however we will sadly be waiting maybe for ever, with all governments bailing out the old managements with the old attitudes and the old ways of behaviour. Given the effects of the good old learning curve, we will be up for more of the same troubles for many more decades to come. At least thats good news for you Mr. Quest, as you can make money on reporting about it and talking about today when the next crisies strikes 20 years down the road.

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