Financial Times FT.com

It's time for central banks to stop bailing out markets

By Andy Xie

Published: August 14 2007 03:00 | Last updated: August 14 2007 03:00

The global credit bubble is bursting. This bubble is primarily leverage financing for owning risky assets. The people who were responsible for what happened played with other people's money, marketed arcane financial products with false promises of fat profits, but stuffed their own pockets with big bonuses. Neither these masters of the universe nor their greedy but naïve investors deserve to be bailed out. They deserve what is coming to them.

The central banks bear equal responsibility in the current debacle. After 9/11, central banks cut interest rates dramatically and provided the cheap money for this leverage bubble. They must not flood the world with liquidity again to sustain this bubble or create another. The central banks should focus on price stability, not financial market stability, and should provide liquidity only to contain the multiplier effect of the bubble bursting on the economy.

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