http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2008/09/25/four-at-four-please-resume-your-normal-worrying/

Four at Four: Please Resume Your Normal Worrying

by David Gaffen

With the photo-ops, the handshakes, the forced smiles from leaders of opposition parties ready, Wall Street can go back to doing what it does best: Worrying about some other unknown problem somewhere out on the horizon. Thursday’s rally — sort of a “buy the rumor, buy the news” approach to the $700 billion bailout (a figure that was basically plucked out of a hat, as Forbes.com reported), and gives Wall Street enough cover to move ahead from here. That has already translated to a loosening in the Treasury market, where short-term debt yields shot up after days of pressure — the three-month note yield was lately at 0.75%, up from earlier in the day. “The alternatives seem pretty obvious and pretty bad — and there’s some comfort in that some progress is being made and it appeared to take some of the risk out of financials,” says William Rutherford, president of Rutherford Investment Management in Portland, Ore. There are, of course, massive logistical hurdles to implementing the U.S. Treasury Garbage Barge Trust, the least of which includes the value of the securities and which institutions will participate, and some are concerned that it may be all too much for the markets right now while still falling short of taking care of the issues. “There should be no illusion that the $700 billion estimate proposed by the Administration will be enough to end the debt crisis,” write analysts at Weiss Research. “There should also be no illusion that the market for U.S. government securities can absorb the additional […]