Should the $700 Billion Bailout Pass?

"Bailout?" There isn't any need for a "bailout." What IS needed is liquidity within the financial system. That can be achieved in a number of different ways --- some of them rotten. One good way, in my opinion, is to quickly establish and federally fund (perhaps to the tune of 700 billion dollars) a new entity to be titled (for want of a better one) the FDC --- an acronym for Federal Deposit Committee. Who will serve on it? The best economists this nation can find, perhaps a half dozen or so (yes, there are actually at least a few around who really do seem to know what they are doing). What will it be mandated to do? First off, perform "triage" on the banking system by ignoring financial titans (such as Citi-Group, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of America)who are sufficiently sound to survive without any governmental assistance. Also, ignore banking and other financial institutions so thoroughly devastated by poor financial judgment that it would constitute economic insanity to try and salvage them. Those would simply have to go bust. Instead, the FDC would seek to "rescue" (but not "bail out") all of the remaining institutions expected to survive if the federal government intervenes ... but not if without external assistance. So how would a "rescue" be implemented? By establishing an FDC deposit account at selected institutions --- a LARGE account running into the millions and slated to receive a relatively low interest rate of, say, 2%.

So then ... an FDC established account assures "instant liquidity" amounting in most cases to many millions of dollars and some measure of protection for taxpayers (since the funds injected are not a gift and not a purchase of equity). But what about all the "toxic assets" we keep hearing about and that it has been suggested the government purchase at taxpayer expense? The institutions would retain them on their books and, hopefully, sell some of them later on in the capital markets for whatever price they will fetch. The point is that they are already "toxic" and won't get any more so simply by virtue of the lenders retaining them. So why have the government take them on when liquidity is what is essential --- and an FDC account of sufficient magnitude would solve that problem? But here is the interesting part: no "socialism" would be involved because the government would merely be an account holder like any other, albeit by far the largest one. And no "give-away" would exist because injected funds would be a deposit and not a gift. Nor would those funds purchase any risky equity because, again, they would only be a deposit. But, that said, it should be easy to discern that it would be a very "influential" account to which folks from the CEO on down would pay careful attention --- because failure to do so could bring ... instant failure via withdrawal. I kind of like the idea of Paul Volker, Alan Greenspan, Henry Paulson and perhaps the likes of Warren Buffet, etc. keeping tabs on such an account. Don't you?

D.S. Arthur of CA 4:43PM October 03, 2008