how the government will address the problem of dealing with the toxic assets

What if, every time someone comes up with an idea for dealing with those assets, it turns out to be an idea that, at best, has no effect and, at worst, makes things much worse? What if thewre is no solution that doesn't result in the taxpayers taking a bath for the collective good?

"Stocks Tumble as Geithner and Fed Detail Bailout Plans", blah, blah.

solution A--let the banks fail, let the chips and toxic paper fall where they may. shareholders, customers take a massive screwing, the depression is on.

solution B--prolong the eventual agony with a series of creative financial jiggery-pokery, make the crash landing as comfortable as possible, first class comes first. at least there's time to get a garden planted and lay in more liquor and ammo.

does anybody really believe in politics or politicians anymore?

Here we are in the midst of a war between fascists and democrats, and Obama continues to side with the fascists. Torture? Won't ban it. State Secrets to block trials of corporations? You Betcha. Now he has a choice between bailing out fascist bankers and their investors (who made literally tons of dough over the past decade) or bailing out America by nationalizing the banks as Sweden did. What will he choose?

Three strikes and he's out. Who's on deck? We tried the smart tall slender guy. Maybe we should consider the smart short bald guy; Peter Defazio where are you?

Andrew,

I think that you have to be careful when anthromorphizing markets. That is a dangerous business. Remember that there are millions of investors, and thousands of key players that are reacting to lots of

different pieces of news at any given and pursuing there buy/sell/hold strategies accordingly.

There are many ways that individuals are going to react to todays news, but my guess is that some people are depressed. They had unrealistic hopes that Geithner would have some rabbit to pull out of a hat, but that was not to be. It is going to continue to be a messy, sloggy process pulling us out of this crisis. There is no light at the end of the tunnel yet.

Geithner was vague and nebulous, exactly what the market didn’t want or expect. The reason, I suspect, is within the “range of options” is the nationalization of banks. Not taking that off the table was bad news for financials.

HTWW noted how markets sold off over 3%. Financials are off 10-15%. Ouch.

Note that nationalization of the banks may be the best option from an awful list. Just not if you’re a current shareholder.

I thought we were promised details on how the second half of the TARP money was going to be spent. And this guy's name is going to be printed on our dollar bills?

Wow...the smartest guys in the room basically just said, "hey, we're going to take a couple of trillion throw some darts & see what happens! Wheeeeeeeeeee!"

"The world must be improving. It used to be that every so often we got within N minutes of someone launching a bunch of nukes. Now it's only money."

"The U.S. economy has, like the Titanic, hit the iceberg. You can bail all you want, but this ship is going down."

-Scorpio69er, January 19, 2008

http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/how-to-rev-up-a-slowing-economy/?apage=2#comment-5262

AND FROM 7 MONTHS AGO...

"The only question that remains is: How will the masses of suffering people react? Will they accept their lot sheepishly and merely await starvation -- or perhaps government helicopters dropping packages of food and water? Or will this economic collapse precipitate something akin to the French Revolution, where the starving masses hunt down the oligarchs and gleefully dispose of them?"

"Only time will tell. God help us all, 'cause whatever happens, it ain't gonna be pretty."

--Scorpio69er, July 13, 2008

http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2008/07/14/washington/14fannie.html?permid=187#comment187

Geithner gave no answers because there are no answers. Anything he does may, at best, only manage to kick the can a little further down the road.

Time to face reality. Time for the government, as I have been pleading for many months now, to quit beating on this dead horse and to start to develop a plan for our basic SURVIVAL.

hope I don't get in trouble for dragging a comment over here from Krugman's blog, I think it deserves reposting.

from HH--

"Where is the discipline? Where is the accountability? What is to stop the bad management of insolvent banks from continuing to manage badly?

Geithner seems to believe that nobody in the US government could do a better job of running the banking industry than the overpaid fools who have just wrecked it. How much longer does the absurd policy of reinforcing failure have to continue before these psychopathic managers have spent the last hyperinflated dollar the taxpayers have been compelled to print for them?

This is not sound government leadership. This is feckless fealty to a corrupt corporatism that has conspicuously failed. It is creating a zombie financial sector in which the public bears all of the risks as these un-dead institutions continue to run amok."<<

Does no one have any faith in letting the markets play out as they will under the assumption that the financial vacuum, like political ones, will be filled?

Yes, I get there will be pain. But its deserved, on Wall Street and Main Street, you don't quit an addiction without some withdrawals.

The government shouldn't be focusing on what to do to give Bank of America a soft landing after their malfeasance purchase of Merrill. Seriously, BoA doesn't have a battery of lawyers, accountants, financial analysts and so forth that could have gone over the Merrill accounts and seen that the debt would be quite large? So large to offset the benefits of acquiring the list of Merrill customers? Or help any other financial institution or any corporation. Didn't GM get half of $13.4B in January and are slated for another $4B?

All we are doing is putting comatose patients on life support. These companies are dead. The new economy, whatever it is, is waiting for these remaining barriers to either fold or get pushed out of the way.

It's going to get worse before it gets better but it will get better.