US banks that have received government aid, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, are considering buying toxic assets to be sold by rivals under the Treasury’s $1,000bn (£680bn) plan to revive the financial system.
….Wall Street executives argue that banks’ asset purchases would help achieve the second main goal of the plan: to establish prices and kick-start the market for illiquid assets. But public opinion may not tolerate the idea of banks selling each other their bad assets. Critics say that would leave the same amount of toxic assets in the system as before, but with the government now liable for most of the losses through its provision of non-recourse loans.
Administration officials reject the criticism because banking is part of a financial system, in which the owners of bank equity — such as pension funds — are the same entities that will be investing in toxic assets anyway. Seen this way, the plan simply helps to rearrange the location of these assets in the system in a way that is more transparent and acceptable to markets.
Italics mine. Look: I’m no financial rocket scientist, but I’m at least a halfway reasonable judge of bullshit. Are the Treasury boffins seriously suggesting that the aim of their plan is merely to “rearrange” the assets from one distressed bank to another? Someone might want to take a wee look at public opinion on this before they put their feet any further in their mouths trying to explain why this is such a great idea. It’s not gonna fly, folks.
