My first car was a piece of crap. It always had problems. One really annoying problem I remember very clearly was that it would stall out every time I took it out of gear. In order to keep it from stalling, I would gently tap the gas when putting it into neutral to keep the engine turning.

The engine of the global economy – the banking system – is now completely out of gear. It’s in neutral. It’s idling. And it is about to stall out. People aren’t going to work, payments aren’t being made, money is not circulating, and everything is going to pot. In order to keep the engine of the economy from completely stalling out, the Federal Reserve hasn’t just tapped the gas. It has slammed the gas. Here’s just part of the announcement from the New York Fed yesterday, March 12. It’s OK to be wide-eyed and incredulous. I said this was going to happen, many times. And believe me, this is nothing compared to what’s about to come:

Today, March 12, 2020, the Desk will offer $500 billion in a three-month repo operation at 1:30 pm ET that will settle on March 13, 2020.  Tomorrow, the Desk will further offer $500 billion in a three-month repo operation and $500 billion in a one-month repo operation for same day settlement.  Three-month and one-month repo operations for $500 billion will be offered on a weekly basis for the remainder of the monthly schedule.  The Desk will continue to offer at least $175 billion in daily overnight repo operations and at least $45 billion in two-week term repo operations twice per week over this period.

So that’s $1.5 trillion over the next two days plus another $1.5 trillion for the next three weeks plus $175 billion every day plus $45 billion twice a week. That’s, uhh…a flagillion or whatever. Who cares?