The Hammering This Time

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Obama's superficial and dishonest treatment of serious problems might work at press conferences, but it works much less well among those we know are paying attention, e.g., people who have their savings on the line. Today his Treasury Secretary announced the next phase of the bank bailout plan. It turns out that this will involve a largely undefined "public-private partnership" to raise a trillion or so to buy off these "troubled assets" (i.e., the crooked sub-prime loans Fannie and Freddie did so much to push). The stock market promptly tanked. . . .The MSM is saying that this is because Secretary Geithner's plan is short on specifics. The truth is that the market tanked because it knows exactly what the muzzed-over specifics will be: The few remaining relatively healthy banks will be forced to buy billions in poisonous assets. In other words, as ever in the nicey-sounding world of "public-private partnerships," the private parties will get hammered.