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Financial markets

Published: March 17 2008 09:43 | Last updated: March 17 2008 19:38

Forget moral hazard. Those still baying for blood on Wall Street as payback for the sins of recent years should be sated by the implosion of Bear Stearns. The Federal Reserve, rightly, is more focused on ensuring the financial system keeps working.

Sunday’s dramatic use of a depression-era clause gave securities firms direct access to the discount window and broadened the rules on qualifying collateral to include most investment-grade assets. That should have helped remove liquidity risk for brokers (admittedly too late for Bear). Anatomy of a crisis

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