Academic

PPIP Set Back Once More

By Gordon Smith, Christine, Hurt, Vic Fleischer, Fred Tung, Lisa Fairfax, David Zaring

That's the program whereby the government would provide leverage to private investors to buy toxic assets from the banks.  It sounded plausible at the time, but it has taken forever to get going, and it still isn't working.  Here's the FDIC's hold-the-phone speech, here's comment from Clusterstock and the Baseline Scenario.  And here's the Times.

The government has been coming up with a new program every fortnight, and tons of them have gone nowhere.  Some blame goes to the "press release, get in the Post, and we'll worry about implementation later" culture of Washington (which I think is a Democrat problem more than a Republican one).  But some of these programs might not go anywhere because they may not be necessary.  Skeptics still abound, but here's the related case for the rehabilitation of Henry Paulson, economy-saver.

Full post as published by Conglomerate on June 04, 2009 (boomark / email).