Reply #14: Fed bounced? check this out ! [View All]

[dipsydoodle]

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What also intrigues the Davos crowd is the extent to which SocGen's actions in reversing its rogue traders' bets on Monday and Tuesday were responsible for the sharp drop in European stock markets.

This matters - because that fall in share prices in part spurred the US Federal Reserve to announce its emergency cut in interest rates on Tuesday.
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Davies told me: "Did the Fed know this was going to happen? If it didn't know it was going to happen, then why on earth wasn't it told? And if it did know it was going to happen could it not then see that it was likely to have an unusual effect on the market - and then was it reacting to a false market in a sense because SocGen was dumping a lot of shares on to the market?"

The notion that this rogue trader could have bounced the most powerful central bank in the world into a savage interest rate cut is alarming, to put it mildly.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/