In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy. „It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. „We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

Charlie Stross sums it up nicely (again):

throwing money at banks will, at best, save the bankers’ jobs — the folks who got their institutions into this mess in the first place by neglecting the first principle of their job, which is this: banking is the art and science of risk management.
…
Bailing out banks will save the financial infrastructure, but won’t do anything about the 10-30 million people who were living in those properties that aren’t affordable or viable any more. Flushing up to 10% of the US population down the homeless toilet is the real screw-up, and of course the Bush administration isn’t interested in dealing with it. (They’re poor, and a disproportionate number of the sub-prime mortgage holders are black, and — want me to continue?) The Bush administration is fairly transparent in its devotion to principle: it’s run by rich folks for rich folks, and that’s an end to it.
…
Never mind bailing out the banks: what needs bailing out is the human beings behind the collateralized debt obligations. The money would be better spent keeping roofs over their heads (and servicing those currently-non-viable mortgages, which action would, incidentally, keep the banks liquid).

Tagged as: finanzen, usa | Author: Martin Leyrer
[Sonntag, 20080928, 21:30 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)