Banks, Troubled Assets, Congress and trust

January 28, 2009

Just read this at Yahoo:

“Financial stocks led Wall Street higher Wednesday on investor hopes the Obama administration will create banks to absorb the bad assets weighing down the financial system.”

Moderately good news short term, and a move I think will help us over the long haul. IF IT’S TRUE. I want to believe the Obama administration. They’re new, and have something to prove.

But weren’t we just here in September and October last year? Wasn’t the plan last October to have the federal government buy up “troubled assets” from banks to give their books that “clean slate” look? Instead, after approving hundreds of billions of dollars to buy troubled assets from banks, we simply gave the banks a bunch of money. Without interrogating them, or making them come up with a plan for the money, or any of the hoops Congress forced GM and Ford to jump through just a few weeks later.

I suspect this time we’ll see the actions that we tell Congress to approve *actually* happen, but it’s *really* hard to be trusting of anything these days. I heard a news report about this yesterday – a talking head style news report (commentary) and no one even mentioned that this was the exact same idea that was floated, voted on, and approved not 3 months ago.

grumble grumble grumble…

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