illiquidity support
The major determination of the initial $700 billion bailout to buy up devalued securities has been scrapped. “Illiquidity in this sector is raising the cost” coupled with continued pressures on consumer credit. “This is creating a heavy burden on the American people and reducing the number of jobs in our economy.” Obviously, Paulson’s original take on the bailout was heavily overestimated.
What U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has just admitted is that the functionality, transparency and the scope of the defective banking instruments is so poor, that buying them up won’t solve the problem or would involve a significantly larger sum of taxpayer money, showing a huge chasm in the underlying viability in the U.S. and global banking industry and perhaps the U.S. economy as well.
The bailout made only a month ago won’t deliver what was promised. Secretary Paulson pitched the bailout plan as a way to rid bank balance sheets of illiquid mortgage assets. Congress may show resistance to releasing the remaining $350 million in funds for future purposes. The real problem is that the national bailout won’t work at all. Banks are still holding the toxic debt that they created.
The United States seems to be stuck in a netherworld of economic dysfunction. Now the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve officials are exploring another facility with the idea of supporting the market for securities backed by assets. Paulson wants to use bailout money to encourage investing again. Investing in a terminally broken system is not the answer and a paramount oversight on Paulson’s part. His misjudgment is just another reason why Paulson should not be allowed to continue to tinker with the financial system. He doesn’t have the expertise required, further muddied by a failed and hopelessly bankrupt and antiquated system. This portends bad things for the U.S. economy and the world, but even worse, the U.S. Treasury is now misrepresenting previous actions without answering to any other authority under the guise of failure. Has anyone really studied the problem enough to be able to develop a core solution?
Continuing to invest in the same bankrupt insanity is poor thinking at best. Trying to convince investors to do the same thing is even worse. There is a push overseas to rebuild a new monetary architecture with a new global financial society. Will desperate American politicians pile on in an effort to redeem themselves and what is left of our failing financial system? What real options does America have?
~ E. Manning
Busted: Bankers and The Global Economy 
I am always amazed that most of you believe these officials are just incompetent and/or don’t know what they are doing.
I believe they know exactly what they are doing. Taking the wealth of the middle class. With the deficit they are destroying social security, the pension funds are decimated, most unions destroyed. Most of the jobs have gone overseas as have the corporations. They have nearly accomplished all they wanted to do. With all the bad mortgages and financing they have taken the value most had in their homes too. The consumer protections and regulations have been gutted. Where did the anti-monopoly laws go? Everything that was put in place to protect us after the Great Depression has been destroyed since the Reagan years. It appears now the time has come to pay the piper.
Comment by SimplySam — November 14, 2008 @ 4:38 pm