Legal Commentary

Define The Geithner Plan"Working"

By Big Tent Democrat

Joe Nocera writes:

Will it work? Isn’t that the only thing that matters at this point?. . . I concluded, somewhat to my surprise, that it might well work. By this, I certainly don’t mean that it will, all by itself, revive the economy. But I think it could put a real floor on the price of the bad assets — critically important to stabilizing the banks — and change the market psychology so that securitized assets can begin to trade again, which is important to get credit flowing. And it will give regulators a far sounder basis to ask Congress for more money to recapitalize banks — or take them over, if it comes to that. . . .

(Emphasis supplied.) What strikes me about this analysis is that Nocera thinks that spending a trillion dollars (the Geithner Plan will cost at least hundreds of billions of dollars) to set the stage for actual policies to fix the problem is a good idea. Frankly, it is an amazing statement. More . . .

Once this process gets under way, does it mean that banks are likely to need additional capital? You bet it does. . . Is the plan perfect? Surely not. Is it guaranteed to do the trick? Of course not. But it is an effort to try something that seems to make a certain amount of intuitive sense, and could, in the best case, make our banks a little healthier and a little better able to extend credit. It doesn’t represent the end of the crisis, not by a long shot. But it represents the beginning of something we should be applauding, not condemning: cold, hard reality.

The cold hard reality Nocera WANTS us to accept is that the Masters of the Universe should have their little world put back together again, at the expense of trillions of taxpayer dollars so they can go back to what they were doing.

Some people seem to believe that that is a good plan and that it will not effect any efforts at enacting a progressive agenda. I think that is insane.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 29, 2009 (boomark / email).