Details of the Geithner bank stability plan came out today, and Wall Street for one loved it. And why not, for the plan basically allows financial institutions to take the worse of the toxic assets rotting away on their balance sheets and pawn off the vast majority of the risks of nonpayment onto the U.S. government (and ultimately the U.S. taxpayer).
I will give credit to Geithner for creativity in crafting the plan given our limited options. Without the use of private money and leverage, we would never be able to afford absorbing all the problematic assets without jeopardizing the health of the U.S. balance sheet and sending our foreign investors fleeing for the exits. And even if we could afford it, Congress would never step up with the money now that the public’s appetite for these Wall Street bailouts has totally disappeared, so Geithner cleverly bypassed that particular concern by giving extraordinary powers to agencies like the Federal Reserve and the FDIC.
It is quite apparent from reading the fact sheet the U.S. Treasury released today regarding the plan (which I encourage everyone to read since it actually provides a concise, rather easy-to-understand summary) that Geithner’s core assumption is that current market prices for these toxic assets are not reflective of their underlying value.
If Geithner is right, and prices of these assets are artificially low, then his plan could very well work. If he’s wrong and, as many experts believe asset prices fall further, then we are throwing good money after bad, and the leverage we are employing will cause even more damage.
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