The use of cholesterol-lowering “statin” drugs, such as Lipitor (atorvastatin) and Zocor (simvastatin), may raise the risk of brain hemorrhage in patients who have experienced a recent stroke or a transient ischemic attack (TIA), new research suggests. Still, this risk may be outweighed by the ability of these agents to lower the overall risk of a second stroke and other serious events, such as heart attack.
The the best explanation of the Fed bailout on the web comes from Interfluidity…..
I agree with several commentators (Felix Salmon, Calculated Risk) that the Bair/Paulson Plan, whatever it is, is not a bailout. But this, this is a bailout,. Nearly all government bailouts take the form of subsidized loans, extending credit at low rates to counterparties or against collateral for which the market would have demanded a high premium. That is precisely what the TAF will do. The Fed’s press release claims, of course, that loans will only be available to “sound” banks, and that they will be “fully collateralized”. But no one who can get the same deal from private markets will use this facility. The need for the program arises because private markets are skeptical about the soundness of counterparties and the quality of the assets they have to offer as collateral. The Fed hints at this when it mentions the “wide variety of collateral” that can be used to secure loans. You can bet that whatever it is private lenders are eschewing will be pledged as collateral to the Fed under TAF. The Fed is going to bear private risk that market refuses to. That is a bailout.
Calculated Risk also has things to say. Felix Salmon explains just how lax the requirements for collateral are…….
But what if the CDO is completely illiquid, and you can’t find a price for it at all? No worries, the Fed will still accept it as collateral, and lend up to 85% of par value. (There’s an interesting thought experiment here: what happens if a long-term CDO has a market value of, say, 90 cents on the dollar? In that case, an illiquid version of that CDO would actually be worth more to the Fed than the liquid version.)
Do keep on looking down that list, though: it turns out that banks can even put up as collateral subprime credit-card receivables – they don’t even need a AAA rating.
The Wall Street Journal has an explanation. Marginal Revolution has a take. So does Macro Man.
Ape Man is going to hate this. He wrote this rant before the bailout was announced.
Edit: I should have also included this from Bloomberg…
The Federal Reserve took advantage of emergency powers to authorize the auctions that officials felt were necessary to ease a credit squeeze, concluding it otherwise lacked legal permission to do so.
The Fed bypassed requirements for prior notice and public comment when writing the regulations to implement today’s agreement with the European Central Bank and three other central banks. The Fed’s official notice today said any delay caused by following standard procedures would have been “contrary to the public interest.”
In homage to this week’s essay of the week, the poem of the week is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S Eliot
As SippicanCottage says, “This is the part of the year that grinds”. We could not have said it better ourselves.
No one at the Ethereal Voice cares one wit for John Lennon but we do like a well written essay. And The Day We Killed John Lennon by Gerard Van der Leun is a well written essay.
Twice this week I came in to find the database that was supposed to be cranking out morning reports instead saying, “Invalid argument.” For those without any coding background, this is basically saying “The thing you want to use can’t be used that way, or maybe it doesn’t even exist.”
In a previous generation of the Click Here to continue reading.
Western Digital makes a huge Network-Ready hard drive that blocks all music formats from being shared with other users. This means you can pull music files off your hard drive, but you can’t let anyone else pull music files off your hard drive. There are legal, legitimate reasons why I could want to share my Click Here to continue reading.
This from The Evening Standard….
Although unhappy, her parents tolerated their daughter’s dismissal-of Islam as a “teenage phase”.
But when she opted to get baptised, while studying at Manchester University, her family were incensed and the death threats began.
Her father arrived at her home with 40 men and threatened to kill her for betraying Islam.
“I saw my uncle and around 40 men storming up the street clutching axes, hammers, knives and bits of wood,” she said.
“My dad was shouting through the letter box, “I’m going to kill you”, while the others smashed on the window and beat the door.
“They were shouting, ‘We’re going to kill you’ and ‘Traitor’.
“It was terrifying. I was convinced I was going to either die, but suddenly after about ten minutes the noise stopped and the men suddenly went away.”
Since then Hannah, who gives talks to churches on Islam, has been on the run from her family, often being forced to flee her home with only a few minutes’ notice.
After receiving the latest text threat from her brother, in June, she finally went to the police.
No one has been arrested or charged in connection with the death threats, but officers have put her on an “at risk” register and have given her a panic number to call if she fears for her own safety.
I imagine that she is so much safer now that she has a panic number to call. I thought that police services all over the world had an emergecy number if people feared for their safety. What good does it do her to give her another number to call?