Levy Rivers's personal annotations on this page
Oldude59 bookmarked
on 2009-02-23
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Second, banks must be rescued. The collapse of Lehman Brothers almost destroyed the world financial system, and we can’t risk letting much bigger institutions like Citigroup or Bank of America implode
This link has been bookmarked by 11 people . It was first bookmarked on 23 Feb 2009, by Levy Rivers.
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How would nationalization take place? All the administration has to do is take its own planned “stress test†for major banks seriously, and not hide the results when a bank fails the test, making a takeover necessary. Yes, the whole thing would have a Claude Rains feel to it, as a government that has been propping up banks for months declares itself shocked, shocked at the miserable state of their balance sheets. But that’s O.K.
And once again, long-term government ownership isn’t the goal: like the small banks seized by the F.D.I.C. every week, major banks would be returned to private control as soon as possible. The finance blog Calculated Risk suggests that instead of calling the process nationalization, we should call it “preprivatization.â€
The Obama administration, says Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, believes “that a privately held banking system is the correct way to go.†So do we all. But what we have now isn’t private enterprise, it’s lemon socialism: banks get the upside but taxpayers bear the risks. And it’s perpetuating zombie banks, blocking economic recovery.
What we want is a system in which banks own the downs as well as the ups. And the road to that system runs through nationalization.
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nspalmerPaul Krugman (quoting Alan Greenspan in support) lays out a strong case for temporary nationalization of insolvent big banks, and wonders why the Obama administration is dithering around with half-measures that give profits to bank owners and losses to ta
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Second, banks must be rescued. The collapse of Lehman Brothers almost destroyed the world financial system, and we can’t risk letting much bigger institutions like Citigroup or Bank of America implode
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