easy money

[walkitout]

In some weird three-way non-deal, there's "financial backstop" provided by the street for the winding down of Lehman, an expansion to the lending facility and a bankruptcy announcement due before midnight tonight. The expansion is to accept collateral of investment grade, including equities. Which is a little spooky, except they were already accepting agency debt and we all saw how well that's done since March.

Some commentators are calling this a backdoor bailout. I don't see it, but maybe I'm just naive.