SmartRemarks

Wednesday was Barack Obama’s 100th day in office. Everyone else has been talking about it. Why not me?

A hundred days is a pretty arbitrary number, of course. But ever since FDR used it as a marker in 1933 for taking quick action against the Depression, it’s been a convenient hook on which to hang stories about new presidents. Few of them compare to FDR, of course. Then again, few are up against the kind of problems he was.

These days, though, the times make the comparison seem a bit more apropos.

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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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Wall Street. A term that designates not only a physical place, but a symbol, a way of thinking. It’s the capital of investing (embodied in the stock market), the capital of high finance (embodied in the banking system), the capital of… capital. It’s the hub of the economy, domestically and internationally.

And it’s the single biggest stumbling block in the Obama administration’s attempt to get the economy back on track.

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