On March 31, I cited Robert Samuelson’s Washington Post article in the blahgue:
“Call it Uncle Sam’s hedge fund,” Robert J. Samuelson wrote in today’s Washington Post. “The rescue of the American financial system proposed by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is, in all but name, a gigantic hedge fund.” “‘Leverage’—borrowing—helped create this mess. Now it’s expected to get us out,” he said.
Along with noted economists Krugman and Galbraith, Stiglitz joined the ranks of the sane, as reported on April 3rd:
Nobel prize-winning economists Paul Krugman, a professor at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, and Joseph Stiglitz, a professor at the Business School of Columbia University in New York, blasted Geithner’s plan for putting the taxpayer on the hook for losses with what they say is little likelihood of success.
“The Geithner plan works only if and when the taxpayer loses big time,” Stiglitz wrote in the New York Times this week. “With the government absorbing the losses, the market doesn’t care if the banks are ‘cheating’ them by selling their lousiest assets, because the government bears the cost.” Krugman wrote in the Times last month that “Obama is squandering his credibility” with the plan.
Now, Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky warns in todays Financial Times:
“One of our strongest recommendations of the last reports was: Do not expand the TALF to buying legacy assets. If its structure is not changed considerably, it’s very, very dangerous… We could be buying securities that are backed with assets that we know were likely riddled with fraud.”
You Should Also Check Out This Post:
- Keeping Score - GO ENDEAVOR !!!
- Reality: The Final Frontier
- Tradition
- What a Summation
- The Facebook Homeowner Revolution
More Active Posts:
- What's the Big Deal about State Banks - doesn't every State already have one? (4)
- Ready to fund the next big bubble? Carbon Derivatives (3)
- Healthcare (2)
- States be Damned! You get what you DESERVE! (2)
- The Dichotomy of Toxic Debt "Value" (2)
- Other States Take Note: State Bank of Florida Proposed (2)
- Stern's Crony-Corporatism (2)
- Shorter's Last Stand (2)
- Mutually Assured Consequences (2)
- The American Way - an Economic Culture (1)
My comment is not for this particular post. It’s the way I view not only this post but your entire site. KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK!!! Our tax dollars has already made these white collar criminals too wealthy already!
But why should they think any different? We’ve bailed out these people several times over the past century. They knew the taxpayers money would come to the rescue when they entered their ‘den of theives’.