Answering Questions No One Asked

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin ... made a ... weird statement about how the nation’s six largest banks have more than enough credit to extend to businesses and households. ... No one can quite figure out why “Mnuchin answered a question that no one seemed to be asking.” ... “It’s like sending out a message saying our space shields can intercept incoming asteroids. Uh, I didn’t know there were any coming our way.”

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin left many Wall Street insiders scratching their heads Sunday after he made a series of unusual phone calls that led to a weird statement about how the nation’s six largest banks have more than enough credit to extend to businesses and households. That could be seen as a bland vote of confidence in an economy after the worst selloff for U.S. markets in a decade. But the problem is that no one can quite figure out why “Mnuchin answered a question that no one seemed to be asking,” as Bloomberg puts it. Liquidity was not seen as a problem in the economy now and some wondered whether the phone calls signaled that it in fact could become a problem in the near future.