If the McC team has any brains they are doing this to take control of the economic issue.
The current Treasury/Fed/Administration plan screws the taxpayers and rewards the dipshirts that caused the problem.
This is an opportunity for McC to show his inner maverick again. He can distance himself from EeEEv111lll Boosh, the Wall Street Elite and stand up for the average American taxpayer.
Allan Meltzer has a better plan:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec08/bailouttalk_09-23.htmlWell, I've listened to governments tell me for 40 years that there was a crisis and the world was going to fall apart if we didn't do this or that. But there have been a few cases where they weren't able to do that.
One was the commercial paper crisis in 1970. There have been several others. The world did not fall apart. Last week, we had Lehman Brothers went into bankruptcy. Within three days, most of the assets were sold.
We had AIG turn down three offers to buy the company because they thought they would get a better deal from the government. It turned out they didn't get the better deal from the government. Now the stockholders suddenly woke up and said -- the major stockholders said, "We'd like to buy the company."
Well, that's what I think we need to do. We need to get the government's hand out of this, and let's see whether we can't get a market solution.
The market people caused this problem. They ought to be the ones that pay the cost of having it cleaned up.
...
Yes. I don't want to join a debate about different ways of picking the public's pocket. I think, if they're going to do something -- and I don't think that we really need to do anything. I've heard these stories over and over for 40 years. You know, maybe there will be a crisis.
But despite all the talk, Main Street is not doing so badly. And the fact is that they've been predicting disaster since January. It hasn't happened.
And if they're going to do something, then what they ought to do is make loans, which the financial institutions have to repay with interest. And if you think -- that's an idea which the Chileans have used in a bigger crisis than this for them in 1982, and it worked for them.
People paid back the loans. They weren't allowed to pay dividends until they repaid the loans. They weren't allowed to take bonuses until they repaid the loans. I think that's the way -- if we're going to do this, then that's the way we should do it.
This guy Ian Welsh has a better plan:http://firedoglake.com/2008/09/19/how-to-bail-out-ordinary-mortgage-holders-and-not-just-banks/
The government is talking about setting up a Trust to buy distressed debt then sell it again. The problem is that the Trust company will simply bail out banks at taxpayer expense without helping mortgage holders much. The mortgages it sells will still be underwater, or too expensive for many people to service, especially as their houses lose value.
The other proposal, just giving money to people to pay for their mortgages, is bad also. Housing prices are actually dropping, most mortgages issues were bad mortgages with horrible penalty clauses, based on assumptions about housing values which are just wrong. House prices are going to keep dropping.
What the government should do instead is set up a Trust to buy mortgages at a discount, then reset them to 20, 30 or 50 year fixed mortgages with a reduced face amount. If the house is later sold, half of the increase goes to the government, so that taxpayers make a profit. The mortgage cannot be paid off before the end of its term so that financial scavengers cannot come around and, as they did over the last ten years, say "get rid of that mortgage, and take ours. It's better. Honest!", because we know that when they say better, they don't mean better for the mortgage holder. The mortgage is attached to the property and is transfered to any new buyer. And the mortgage cannot be removed from the property, and any new mortgages attached to the property are junior to the government mortgage.
End results:
a) a floor is set for mortgage prices. (Whatever discount the government is buying at. Probably 60% to 70%, but it should be based on what the long run price was in the area before the housing bubble.) This ends the confidence crisis in these securities, because there is now a market price—what the Trust will pay.
b) It helps homeowners stay in their homes.
c) It gets rid of overly complex mortgages and puts in their place a dead simple mortgage that anyone can understand.
d) It punishes lenders, which they deserve, for making loans they should never have made.
e) While it does keep homeowners in their homes, it doesn't let them off scot-free either. In exchange for a good mortgage they can service, they give up some of the future profits on sales in their houses.
f) The government will almost certainly make a long term profit on this. This is important, because it's not fair for people who aren't underwater on mortgages to spend hundreds of billions or trillions bailing out those who are without some expectation that in the end it won't be more than just a transfer of wealth to them and to investors and banks.
If McC uses this opportunity to come up with something like what these guys are proposing he looks like a leader, he looks like he's for the taxpayer and he looks like he really is the one that will bring change to this sordid mess in DC.
But... he may just go business as usual, flub around doing nothing of import and completely lose the election in the next two weeks.
Could go either way.
