Welcome to Thoughts on the Market.

I'm Andrew Sheets, Chief Cross Asset Strategy

for Morgan Stanley.

Along with my colleagues bring you a variety of perspectives,

I'll be talking about trends across the global investment landscape and how we put those ideas together.

It's Friday, March 27th, at 3 p.m. in London.

The best analogy I've ever heard for the importance of government action in markets goes something like this.

Imagine you're watching a professional basketball game or whatever your favorite sport happens to be.

Both teams are made up of generally good, generally honest, extremely hard-working players.

They're also extremely competitive and the prize for winning is high.

Now imagine that that game was played without referees.

I think it's fair to say that it wouldn't work,

and more likely a normally good-natured competitive event

could get out of hand.

I mentioned this because at the present moment,

the referees are doing their best to sort out

what's currently taking place in financial markets. How they go about that isn't easy

but it does matter for what happens next. In this case when I refer to the referees, I'm referring to Central Banks and the governments themselves.

The question of how and when these actors should intervene in financial markets is a question that goes back well over a hundred years. Indeed in 1913 the Federal

Reserve was created to help prevent the types of financial instability that had

defined the century before. Today they face the confluence of two issues. First the

U.S. and global economy are likely to go through a recession. The result of

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