[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"Exactly right. Although I fear that further government intervention will lead us in the wrong direction, I also fear that no intervention at all would be a disaster."

Thanks, Trisham.

An analogy: Imagine the situation if Congress had, instead of meddling with mortgages, decided to meddle in brick-making. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and Jamie Gorelick felt it would be great for the Federal Government to force brick-makers to make bricks out of cardboard. That way Those Less Fortunate could have bricks too! And now those crappy risky bricks are built into the whole global finance system. A $62 trillion pyramid has a bunch of those bricks built into it and is teetering. It's gonna fall on all of us. What to do? We can complain about how the bricks got made all day. We can wait for the free market to come out with replacement bricks. But there are so many bricks that only government has the resources and the speed to patch all the bricks quickly so they can be extracted one by one by the market.

I wish it were otherwise but see no alternative that doesn't risk an absolute calamity.

[trisham]

What to do? We can complain about how the bricks got made all day. We can wait for the free market to come out with replacement bricks. But there are so many bricks that only government has the resources and the speed to patch all the bricks quickly so they can be extracted one by one by the market.

I wish it were otherwise but see no alternative that doesn't risk an absolute calamity.

************************

Good analogy. I'm sorry to say that I agree.

[beckysueb]

Thank you. You are the first one to use an analogy that I can understand. Math was my worst subject in school.

[MHGinTN]

By removing the forced mark to market, can the financial institutions then sort out which assets are failed and separate them from the other paying assets, and with insurance by a safety net for the paying assets? Yes, and that is what in essence the Republican plan has been trying to insert, to reduce by hundreds of billions the exposure of failing assets. Would you like to elaborate on that? I would be eager to read what you have to say in that regard.