The Fed also might think about setting up a special facility for non-bank lending institutions that are experiencing a liquidity squeeze. Perhaps also a temporary liquidity facility for commercial paper lenders. The asset-backed commercial paper market is vital to funding many of the daily operations of businesses across the country, and it's this market that has been hardest hit.
Such monetary front-loading would be very powerful, indeed. However, if the Fed goes small with only quarter-point reductions for fed funds and the discount rate, many investors will have an incentive to withhold money while they wait for interest rates to finally bottom at much lower levels later this year or next. In other words, a timid Fed action might actually prolong and deepen the economic slowdown.
This is not a time for small-ball. It's time for Bernanke and Company to go big.
And let's not forget that taxes are just as important as money. President Bush and Treasury man Henry Paulson should absolutely squash all the Washington rumors of tax hikes, in particular a cap-gains tax increase. If investors expect a hike in the cap-gains tax, they will have every incentive to launch a massive wave of stock market selling. Needless to say, this would be utterly calamitous for the whole economic picture.
The animal spirits may have had their wings clipped a bit by the credit crunch, but with the right tax and money policies there is still plenty of sizzle and juice in this story. It's very easy to be totally pessimistic and bearish right now, but that's precisely why I will avoid falling into that trap.
Optimists are winners. Pessimists are losers.