On October 3rd a $700 billion bank bailout was signed into effect by President Bush. Commonly referred to as TARP (“Troubled Asset Relief Program”) or $%&# (“Bull Shit”), the taxpayer-financed bill was meant to buy up rapidly declining bank assets, restore investor confidence, clean up balance sheets, and increase lending. To make a long saga short, the government didn’t buy up those assets and the banks didn’t increase lending—though they did manage to reward executives. For economist Joseph Stiglitz, the answer is not no-strings attached bailout money, but some sort of nationalization.
In his article for The Nation, Stiglitz advocates taking a serious look at “financial reorganization”, more fearfully known as bankruptcy, and “conservatorship” instead of the socialism-invoking nationalization. Then there are the options of creating a “Good Bank” or a “Bad Bank”. Either way, all the toxic assets that are sinking our banking system are being moved somewhere, but wouldn’t you prefer “good” over “bad”? Stiglitz’s piece doesn’t harp on semantics, and there are differences between these terms, but those distinctions have been muddled as the terms have become politicized.
There are real solutions that may not be adequately considered because they don’t sound right. Remember America and DMX worrying about Obama’s name? No government, free-market or otherwise, is free from propaganda. We couch our bills in inspiring slogans (“America Reinvestment Act”) and our wars in messianism (“Operation Iraqi Freedom”). To paraphrase, it’s the subprime commercial mortgage backed securities greedy bankers using bailouts for bonuses foreclosures unemployment rates, stupid.
In his article for The Nation, Stiglitz advocates taking a serious look at “financial reorganization”, more fearfully known as bankruptcy, and “conservatorship” instead of the socialism-invoking nationalization. Then there are the options of creating a “Good Bank” or a “Bad Bank”. Either way, all the toxic assets that are sinking our banking system are being moved somewhere, but wouldn’t you prefer “good” over “bad”? Stiglitz’s piece doesn’t harp on semantics, and there are differences between these terms, but those distinctions have been muddled as the terms have become politicized.
There are real solutions that may not be adequately considered because they don’t sound right. Remember America and DMX worrying about Obama’s name? No government, free-market or otherwise, is free from propaganda. We couch our bills in inspiring slogans (“America Reinvestment Act”) and our wars in messianism (“Operation Iraqi Freedom”). To paraphrase, it’s the subprime commercial mortgage backed securities greedy bankers using bailouts for bonuses foreclosures unemployment rates, stupid.
2 comments:
that dmx shit is almost as classic as the NORE interview. oh my god i'm going to find that interview right now
this is a very good thing about a very bad thing
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