Kevin D. Williamson probes the Fed’s motivation in his latest column for National Review Online:

The question is: What is the Fed thinking? Is it looking out for the United States, or is it looking out for the banks?

The generous interpretation of the Fed’s action goes like this: The Fed hasn’t really risked anything — it’s just making it easier for them to borrow from one another, because a European banking crisis would cause a 2008-style credit crisis worldwide. With U.S. economic indicators improving modestly, the main worry of U.S. policymakers right now is economic events outside our own borders. The Fed can’t work out the Europeans’ finances for them, but it can soften the blow to international credit markets, and thereby do a service to the American economy.

The ungenerous interpretation of the Fed’s action goes like this: Everybody knows the jig is up, but lo these many years after the 2008 crisis, trillions in bailouts later, the banks are still in weak shape, we haven’t really reformed our financial rules, there’s insufficient transparency to really know what kind of shape everybody is in, and the world’s biggest banks just got downgraded on Tuesday. We’re buying time and hoping for the best, and giving all our favorite bankers an extra little margin of error to get their acts together before the big kaboom gets heard ’round the world.