We extend recent work on the connection between loopy belief propagation and the Bethe free energy. Constrained minimization of the Bethe free energy can be turned into an unconstrained saddle-point problem. Both converging double-loop algorithms and standard loopy belief propagation can be inter- preted as attempts to solve this saddle-point problem. Stability analysis then leads us to conclude that stable (cid:12)xed points of loopy belief propagation must be (local) minima of the Bethe free energy. Perhaps surprisingly, the converse need not be the case: minima can be unstable (cid:12)xed points. We illustrate this with an example and discuss implications.