Nice to come back just in time for a petty academic/bureaucrat with far too much power to do something stupid and self-serving and give me an opportunity to vent a lot of rage. I'm not the only one.

• Doug Kass over at Realmoney (subscription required to see the whole piece) thinks it will do nothing to help, and may even hurt, echoing my comments earlier today:

  The U.S.'s economic problem lies firmly in the consumer/housing market, and the larger-than-expected rate cut will likely promote more inflation, a downward spiral in the U.S. dollar and, most importantly, will likely raise intermediate and long-dated bond yields.

  The latter point is the most important, as this will serve to further cripple the housing market by raising mortgage rates -- especially for those who are facing an imminent reset.

• Mish points out that this Fed move was apparently aimed at nothing other than bailing out their banking buddies, at the expense of pretty much everybody else.
• Even Cramer is a bit more subdued than yesterday, claiming (probably correctly) that you can't short into this and have to ride the rally, but using a lot less hyperbole when talking about the effect on homeowners facing mortgage troubles.
• Angelo Mozillo, at Countrywide Loansharks, thinks that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should raise their loan minimums to $850,000 in order to help deal with the "jumbo" morgage shortage. Hey Angelo, if those mortgages are such great deals for the US taxpayer, why aren't you rushing in to put your own money behind them? Oh yeah, you made your money by getting the taxpayer to take on all of these ridiculous risks and charging us transaction fees, not by actually taking any risk yourself. How silly of me to believe that in a capitalist market, prices (including loan rates) should be set by people who are willing to put their money where their mouths are, not by petty bureaucrats and politicians shoveling it your way...
• I'm increasingly of the belief that Cody is right. Sudan is a better investment than the US. At least their bureaucrats are more honest about the fact that they're just helping their cronies, rather than claiming that they're doing it "for the good of the country."
• By the way, congrats to Cody for landing an anchor gig at the coming Fox Business Network.
• Jeff Macke delivers sage advice. No matter what you think of the long term implications, you just can't be short:

  You can rage against the long term implications of this unified stance of money dumping but, from where I'm sitting, being short here seems like picking a fight with both the Fed and the tape. I'm inclined to take some profits, fret for the future and wait for lower prices to add more longs to my book but I'm not at all interested in shorting this tape.

• And Barry Ritholtz sums things up nicely by pointing out that Bernake and the Fed have now given up any real claim to being an independent agency. They are now simply Wall Street's Bitch.

Myself, I've judiciously added some positions in materials-related stocks and other non-dollar senstive areas. I think that you just have to avoid anything senstive to the US currency, and if you're inclined to have cash, it's got to be the cash of some country other than the US.

-btc