That is, why it isn’t the solution it is touted to be. Jeffrey Sachs of the Financial Times: The Geithner-Summers plan, officially called the public/private investment programme, is a thinly veiled attempt to transfer up to hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayer funds to the commercial banks, by buying toxic assets from the banks at far above their market value. It is dressed up as a market transaction but that is a fig-leaf, since the government will put in 90 per cent or more of the funds and the “price discovery” process is not genuine.
So to avoid the overwhelming popular objection to perpetual bailouts and expenditures, the Obama administration will do this all “off budget” and with no hearings, Congressional debates, or votes. Not very transparent and quite imperious, when you get right down to it.
Yeah, not very “hopey changey” is it?
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... Obama does with the bailouts. To be fair, Bush was already doing the bailouts largely off the Federal balance sheet. But you have rocks for brains if you think Ogabe is cleaning things up.
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