OT, but as long as we're talking about criticism, these comments from the Guardian and The Nation are worth reading.

Dan Roberts writes that the toxic asset plan unveiled by the treasury aims to achieve roughly the same as the British government's insurance of bad loans did for the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds.

He says that Geithner suffers from an absurd faith in the free market, and from the idea that the banks will go back to normal and bring the rest of the economy with them if we "protect them from their past mistakes."

But these responses underestimate the scale of this crisis. It is telling that yesterday's plans cover not just "toxic credit securities" but also many ordinary bank loans made to parts of the US economy that were meant to be still functioning relatively normally. Similarly, the assets put forward by Lloyds in the UK insurance scheme include every buy-to-let mortgage issued by HBOS, not just the ones already in default. Judge the banks on their actions rather than their words, and you would conclude this crisis has some way to go.

Yet both governments assume banks are suffering from a crisis of confidence that can be cured simply by removing the uncertainty of "toxic" debt. What neither seems willing to acknowledge is the likelihood that much of their lending has gone for good; that this is not a liquidity crisis, but a solvency crisis.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/24/toxic-assets-rbs-lloyds-aig

The results of a similar plan in Britain:

. . . months after a Geithner-style fix, Britain's headlines today read: "Deflation returns to UK after nearly fifty years (The Guardian), "UK unemployment jumps at fastest pace on record" (The Telegraph) and "(Bank of England policymaker) Blanchflower warns of 'horrible' things to come" (The Independent).

From the front page of this morning's conservative Daily Mail newspaper comes a measure of where Geithner's misguided economic might lead:

"Millions face 'worst of both worlds' as cost of living rises but rate for fixing pay and pensions falls to zero."

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/state_of_change/420588/geithner_goes_from_zero_to_hero_not_so_fast?rel=emailNation

The horror! The horror!

I would like to see Phelps and Foxx join Michele Bachmann in armed insurrection against the 80% or so of Americans who are not completely batshit crazy or so filled with rage and self-loathing that it spills out of the the US into other countries.

Then we could free all of the people who are in jail on drug-related charges and replace them with the insane anti-"fag" activists, the anti-democracy morons in Foxx's gang, and Bachmann's deluded, hate-filled militia groups.

Justice!

He is hiding under Shootingsparks's bed with the scary Jew.

and revel in your freedom, because you have had one lucky escape. You don't have to worry about being OK with everyone.

HA HA! Oh, man, oh, man, only in America.

Just wanted to note some more commentary that supports the warnings of today's blog. Dan Roberts from The Guardian wrote recently about the fact that the UK has tried a Geithner-type plan and it has been a miserable failure:

. . . both governments assume banks are suffering from a crisis of confidence that can be cured simply by removing the uncertainty of "toxic" debt. What neither seems willing to acknowledge is the likelihood that much of their lending has gone for good; that this is not a liquidity crisis, but a solvency crisis.

And this, it seems, is what we have to look forward to (and by the way, I am scared shitless). The results in the UK:

. . . months after a Geithner-style fix, Britain's headlines today read: "Deflation returns to UK after nearly fifty years" . . . "UK unemployment jumps at fastest pace on record" . . . "(Bank of England policymaker) Blanchflower warns of 'horrible' things to come" . . . "Millions face 'worst of both worlds' as cost of living rises but rate for fixing pay and pensions falls to zero." http://www.thenation.com/blogs/state_of_change/420588/geithner_goes_from_zero_to_hero_not_so_fast?rel=emailNation

This is from Lachman in Glenn's blog:

And after years of lecturing Asian and Latin American leaders about the importance of consistency and transparency in sorting out financial crises, we fail on both counts: . . .

Robert Kuttner writes about transparency and the looting of the FDIC, whose money Geithner wants for the Treasury to use in his bailout plan, and the fact that money is going to fall into the black hole of unaccountability that Taibbi describes at the Fed:

The FDIC is the newly drafted participant in this scheme and its leaders are said to be less than thrilled with its designated role. Compared to the Treasury, the FDIC has been a model of competence and transparency. . .

Like everything else about the Paulson-Geithner approach, this latest twist is totally clubby and non-transparent. There is no objective process, and no public criteria. Congress is being kept in the dark. The Congressional Oversight Panel is being denied the documents it needs. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/geithners-last-stand_b_177850.html

It will come as no surprise that, as Salon reported yesterday, the head of the EU, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, damned Obama's plan as "the road to hell" that EU governments must avoid.