The New York Times reports tonight, although without any proper attribution to Lewis Carroll:

U.S. Bank Bailout to Rely in Part on Private Money

Wall Street helped produce the global financial and economic crisis. Now, as the Obama administration prepares to unveil a revised bailout plan for the banking system, policy makers hope Wall Street can be part of the solution.

Administration officials said the plan, to be announced Tuesday, was likely to depend in part on the willingness of private investors other than banks — like hedge funds, private equity funds and perhaps even insurance companies — to buy the contaminating assets that wiped out the capital of many banks.

The officials say they are counting on the profit motive to create a market for those assets. The government would guarantee a floor value, officials say, as a way to overcome investors’ reluctance to buy them.

Details of the new plan, which were still being worked out during the weekend, are sketchy. And they are likely to remain so even after Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner announces the plan on Tuesday.

Apparently, those reports of Obama continuing Bush’s “faith-based” initiatives are barely scratching the surface…

Tags: bailout, Obama Administration

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 8th, 2009 at 10:22 pm and is filed under Bad Government, Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.