Here is the fact sheet and the new website for the Administration’s Financial Stability Plan.

Lord Acton once said, “The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.”

It appears that the end game is upon us.

9 Comments

  1. Spiritcoach:

    Seems to me that it would be better to amend ERISA and allow public (e.g., state) pension funds to invest in small businesses in their states. That would make it more likely that the beneficiaries would have jobs (because, in trickle-up economics, if businesses are successful and employing local workers, there are more taxes paid and thus more funding for the salaries of state workers). Small business equity, with proper controls (due diligence) is a helluva better investment than banks (at least the ones that need the money because of toxic assets) and opaque hedge funds that invest in instruments nobody understands (and that threaten to bring down the global financial system to the extent it isn’t already brought down.

    I agree with others that this plan is too debt-centered, but I also believe there needs to be easing of credit to small businesses. I’m not sure SBA loans is the way to achieve that, though. I would like to see healthy local banks, out of a sense of patriotism (much like the guy at the bank in North Carolina in the Washington Post story) advertise their efforts to assist local small businesses using creative strategies to engender confidence as a way of attracting more deposits away from the likes of Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. In the end, the only thing that will end this crisis is a restoration of confidence about the future in the middle class. That’s a local thing, requiring local strategies and solutions.

  2. New York Times: Congressman seeks to shore up banks with pension funds February 10, 2009

    A Proposal to Shore Up Banks With Pension Funds By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/business/economy/10pension.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=proposal%20to%20shore%20up%20banks&st=cse

    I’m wondering if this is a shot across the bow or testing of the waters. Likely a congressman’s idea to Take the IRA’s into a government supervision program may have been.

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