SmartRemarks

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner today announced a new plan that will allegedly help stabilize the financial markets, restore institutions’ balance sheets, and thus ease the credit crunch with all its attendant ripple effects. It’s an unwieldy construct with multiple parts, but ultimately a lot of it comes down to using taxpayer money to help purchase “toxic assets.” (E.g., CDOs backed by MBSs, the stuff hedged by all those CDSs. Isn’t it fun to play with the new lingo we’ve all learned these last few months?)

The stock market seems to love the plan, seeing as how it surged several hundred points today. But does that mean it’s a good thing? 

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Boy, doesn’t that sound just too exciting for words? (Don’t drool all over your keyboard in anticipation.)

See, here’s the thing. On the one hand, an old friend had made a comment in response to my recent post about the top news stories of last year, with a link to a piece from AlterNet calling into question just how serious the problems on Wall Street really were. And I read that with some mild interest, but didn’t really follow up on it… until he shared that same link on Facebook, kicking off what became a lengthy discussion thread.

Meanwhile, on the other hand, on New Year’s Eve an entirely different old friend and I were having a semi-intoxicated discussion about the current economy, and he put forward the proposition that much of the blame for the downward spiral (on Wall Street, at least) should be pinned on mark-t0-market accounting. It was all a bit slurred, however, and didn’t quite dovetail with what I thought I knew about the subject, and I pretty much forgot about it… until the subject popped up again when he linked to an article about it in that very same Facebook discussion.

And it was off to the races!…

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