Subscribe to this blog's feedThere seems to be an unusual sort of story surfacing these days - good news. The equity markets are no longer plunging as steeply as they did a few weeks ago;
interbank borrowing rates are improving (the infamous Ted spread is falling, though it's still at levels that would have been unthinkable before last month);
and CDS spreads are coming in slowly but steadily.
"All that government intervention is working. Just give it a little time", claims an ebullient Felix Salmon.
Bond trader John Jansen is less enthusiastic: "the equity markets fail to realize that we are in the eye of the storm and that while the financial sector is taking the very first steps towards recovery that the rest of the economy will soon be hit..."
There's news of some sort of massive US fiscal stimulus plan - though it's anyone's guess what shape the result will be.
Paul Krugman cautions: "But the bottom is falling out of the real economy — it’s only the purely financial side that’s looking slightly better."
