Not surprisingly the Dow surged today, signaling the US Treasury is moving in the right direction. This size of this action was beyond the ability of the Fed’s balance sheet.

Do you really think this action was taken to protect the housing market? The GSEs were too big to fail? Dan Gross at Newsweek sees things a bit differently:

>The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be sold and marketed as efforts to shore up the U.S. housing market. That could be. But they are really meant at shoring up our damaged international financial standing, preserving leadership and making sure the U.S. Treasury Secretary doesn’t get tarred and feathered at the next G-8 meeting. In a world of significant global financial imbalances, the doctrine of “too big to fail,” has been replaced by the doctrine of “too international to fail.”

There is a very well laid out explanation of the US government’s balance sheet in Randall Forsyth’s column in Barrons called: Beginning of the Financial “Surge”. If you don’t subscribe to Barrons Online, you should consider since the financial markets and the housing/credit market are now joined at the hip.

>The Treasury Sunday acknowledged the federal government’s role in creating the “ambiguity” leading investors to assume it would stand behind Fannie and Freddie debt and MBS. Now it said it had a “responsibility” to “avert and ultimately address the systemic risk now posed by the scale and breadth of the holdings of GSE debt and mortgage backed securities,” totaling some $5 trillion held by investors around the globe. That doesn’t include the trillions more in derivatives contracts entered into by Fannie and Freddie.

Trillions: I wonder what those derivatives contracts are worth in relation to outstanding MBS? My very limited experience working with Wall Street and housing related derivative products last year tells me it has got to be a mind boggling amount. All the more important to facilitate stabilization now.

Another Barrons piece by Steven Sears, “The Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac takeover signals big trouble, not an all-clear.

indicates there are a lot of market gyrations in the future for investors…

>”Once the euphoria ends, we need to decide where to go,” Credit Suisse’s strategists told clients…Investment-bank traders, who cannot be identified because they are not allowed to speak to media, say trading is very slow and what they are seeing gravitates toward adjusting bearish positions. “No call buyers,” is what one trader said.

In other words, its really a new playing field. Let’s not let our expectations surge too soon.