Free Republic

The private sector will set prices. Taxpayers will share in any upside.The American economy and much of the world now face extraordinary challenges, and confronting these challenges will continue to require extraordinary actions. No crisis like this has a simple or single cause, but as a nation we borrowed too much and let our financial system take on irresponsible levels of risk. Those decisions have caused enormous suffering, and much of the damage has fallen on ordinary Americans and small-business owners who were careful and responsible. This is fundamentally unfair, and Americans are justifiably angry and frustrated.The depth of public...

Geithner to formally unveil details of next step in rescuing banks: Public-private partnerships. WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) -- The Obama administration on Monday will formally unveil a program to help banks clean up their books by subsidizing private investors' purchase of troubled assets. The effort marks the next big step in Washington's six-month-old bank rescue, which has so far mostly entailed making capital investments and backstopping bank debt. Administration officials, in a briefing with reporters late Sunday night, said they plan to commit $75 billion to $100 billion to start wiping out bad assets and would evaluate how programs are working before...

To view or print the PDF content on this page, download the free Adobe® Acrobat® Reader®. March 23, 2009tg-65Treasury Department Releases Details on Public Private Partnership Investment ProgramFact SheetPublic-Private Investment ProgramView White Paper and FAQs at http://financialstability.govThe Financial Stability Plan – Progress So Far: Over the past six weeks, the Treasury Department has implemented a series of initiatives as part of its Financial Stability Plan that – alongside the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – lay the foundations for economic recovery: Efforts to Improve Affordability for Responsible Homeowners: Treasury has implemented programs to allow families to save on their mortgage...

THE Obama administration is about to unveil the anxiously awaited details of its initiative to fix the banks. But, judging from the details already leaked, the Public-Private Investment Fund (PPIF) isn't going to do the job. Those of us working last year under then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson studied and rejected a similar scheme. Expect the new team to ultimately wind up falling back on expansion of the program we began, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), which just became operational. A viable long-term solution must purge from banks' balance sheets the troubled assets now clogging the nation's credit pipeline....