It ain’t going to be as easy as making a Steven Speilberg movie with Tom Hanks, that much I can assure you:
. . . The health of many banks is getting worse, not better, as the downturn makes it difficult for all kinds of consumers and businesses to pay back money they borrowed from these financial firms. Conservative estimates put bank losses yet to be declared at $1 trillion. […]
On the table are several approaches [to save the US banking system], which officials have begun to experiment with on a smaller scale. One would give the firms a federal guarantee protecting them against losses on assets that are backed by failing mortgages and other troubled loans. Another would set up new government institutions to buy these toxic assets. A third would inject more money into financial firms in exchange for ownership stakes, perhaps ending with nationalization in all but name.
The article goes on to say all these options are bad ones. Well, duh! What brilliant financial and economic reporting our major media outlets provide us here in America. Sadly, they seem prepared to be much more critical of whatever option Obama’s administration chooses than they are of the people who created this mess: the privatization happy, free marketering, and deregulating fools of the GOP and the conservative movement which swept Republicans (and reactionary DLC types) to power and allowed them dismantle what had been the strongest, most vibrant economy in the world and turn it into the largest creditor nation in history.
Yet something tells me that media criticism will be most harshly directed at those who have been left holding this sagging bag of sewage we call our financial system. Nothing they (i.e., the Obama economic team and Democrats in Congress) do will be good enough. Any mistakes they make will be trumpeted and magnified by our media mavens. Any options chosen will be criticized and ridiculed using familiar Republican talking points.
For that is the standard operating procedure our mainstream media uses to “inform the public” these days. Ignore that the people (conservative pundits, corporate executives, Republican politicians and industry lobbyists) who left fresh steaming turds all over the floor are the ones they turn to for quotes and information and expert analysis of Obama’s actions to address this crisis. It would be rude after all to point out that it was these idiot children who trashed the house and left this monumental mess to be cleaned up by adults the American people finally saw fit to put back in charge. Far easier to bash the poor adults, even before they decide how best to begin Operation Clean Up.
Personally, I suspect in the end we will move toward gradual nationalization of these banks. They are too large and too insolvent for any other option to have a chance of working. But God forbid anyone acknowledge the obvious solution, much less advocate for its adoption. They’ll have to come up with some clever name to fool the press that nationalization isn’t occurring. Too bad Obama isn’t a Republican. Than it would be so much easier to convince the Beltway Commentariat of the rightness of his actions.
