In This little E-Mail Box Of Mine ......... 
Michael:
Insuring lenders won't help if they don't have the capital to make loans!
Keep in mind, the assets that are currently hurting us so badly have been mostly written down to levels that are blind to any fundamentals. I'm seeing AAA-rated mortgage backed bonds (Alt A) trading at 40-50 cents on the dollar. For one particular issue I looked at today, 5% of the underlying loans are delinquent and there are no option-ARMs in the portfolio.
You can buy this today and not lose a penny of your investment, even if over 80% of the loans eventually default and you only collect 50% on the defaulted loans. On top of that, you get a 15%+ yield. (the numbers are all approximate because there is no real market for these assets, regardless of their intrinsic value)
These are the kinds of assets that the government would be purchasing. Unless you see the end of the world coming, the taxpayer would make money on credits like these, especially if the government is not permitted to buy these at a premium to their current marks (which I believe the bill would have required)
This just highlights the extreme levels of fear in the market. No one is buying. If the government doesn't intervene, this only gets worse.
Panic isn't stopped by panicked investors. Panic is stopped by an entity with a long time horizon and a big balance sheet. Right now, the government is the only player who fits that profile.
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I have been in the camp that believed that the government had not sufficiently made the case for such a massive bailout. The events of the last several days have changed my mind. I read today that banks across Europe are collapsing.
That said, the original bailout plan was conceived too quickly, was too favorable to the finance companies and gave too much power to one person. The revised plan was an improvement but was still insufficient.
There is no doubt that a bailout/rescue bill of some type will be passed before Congress leaves town. However, the odds have improved that we will see a plan that gives taxpayers a better shake.
As much as I hate the idea of a bailout, the alternative would likely be very painful for most of us who read this blog. Very few of us will enjoy Schadenfreude if the economy takes an excessively hard landing.
This isn't about propping-up the housing market...that's probably toast for the next 2 to 3 years at least. Home prices are going to have to reach an equilibrium level and this bailout plan is not designed to keep that from happening
That said, the original bailout plan was conceived too quickly, was too favorable to the finance companies and gave too much power to one person. The revised plan was an improvement but was still insufficient.
There is no doubt that a bailout/rescue bill of some type will be passed before Congress leaves town. However, the odds have improved that we will see a plan that gives taxpayers a better shake.
As much as I hate the idea of a bailout, the alternative would likely be very painful for most of us who read this blog. Very few of us will enjoy Schadenfreude if the economy takes an excessively hard landing.
This isn't about propping-up the housing market...that's probably toast for the next 2 to 3 years at least. Home prices are going to have to reach an equilibrium level and this bailout plan is not designed to keep that from happening
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Credit should remain available unless the Chinese change their mind about investing their huge surpluses in the US."
It's not as easy as that, unfortunately. As the world economy downshifts dramatically, much of the "surpluses" that China has been running will disappear. I think we will discover in short order that it really wasn't Chinese "savings". They are a growing economy, with a limited system of financial intermediation and tremendous poverty still, and they have been going flat out investing in their own country.
Much of the "savings" has been an illusion. They are the flip side of our trade balance. We borrow dollars against our houses and assets. We then ue those dollars to buy Vhinese goods. Chinese exporters give those dollars to their central bank. Their central bank "prints" yuan to give to the exporters, who then spend those yuan in domestic investment and consumption. This leads to price inflation in China (because the central bank is printing) and credit inflation in the US. The price inflation in China ultimately destabilizes their economy because of the pressure on profits and on the population. The credit inflation in the US leads to asset bubbles that are unsustainable in that the credit used to elevate the price cannot be repaid out of income. And around it goes.
When the lenders fear they will not be repaid (whether in the US or in China), and the producers cannot profitably run their businesses and/or the population cannot afford to eat (this is starting to be the case in China), the system collapses. All ponzi schemes end, and the fact that this one is collapsing at record low real interest rate levels should tell us volumes about what a mess the Fed has created by consistently trying to force real interest rates below their equilibrium level for so long. Those who on this blog used to argue that the Fed is so much smarter now than in the 1930s should really think about where we have arrived after all this "smart tinkering".
Any attempt to seriously "inflate" away the problem spooks the lenders and they stop lending. Deflation assures that the creditors are at least partially repaid with valuable currency, but it is extraordinarily painful to those leveraged buyers who were counting on "inflation" to bail them out, and iof course certain creditors will be out of luck anyway.
And so, we are at a macroeconomic impasse. I firmly believe that the guys who got us into this mess are not going to be able to get us out. But they sure will try!
It's not as easy as that, unfortunately. As the world economy downshifts dramatically, much of the "surpluses" that China has been running will disappear. I think we will discover in short order that it really wasn't Chinese "savings". They are a growing economy, with a limited system of financial intermediation and tremendous poverty still, and they have been going flat out investing in their own country.
Much of the "savings" has been an illusion. They are the flip side of our trade balance. We borrow dollars against our houses and assets. We then ue those dollars to buy Vhinese goods. Chinese exporters give those dollars to their central bank. Their central bank "prints" yuan to give to the exporters, who then spend those yuan in domestic investment and consumption. This leads to price inflation in China (because the central bank is printing) and credit inflation in the US. The price inflation in China ultimately destabilizes their economy because of the pressure on profits and on the population. The credit inflation in the US leads to asset bubbles that are unsustainable in that the credit used to elevate the price cannot be repaid out of income. And around it goes.
When the lenders fear they will not be repaid (whether in the US or in China), and the producers cannot profitably run their businesses and/or the population cannot afford to eat (this is starting to be the case in China), the system collapses. All ponzi schemes end, and the fact that this one is collapsing at record low real interest rate levels should tell us volumes about what a mess the Fed has created by consistently trying to force real interest rates below their equilibrium level for so long. Those who on this blog used to argue that the Fed is so much smarter now than in the 1930s should really think about where we have arrived after all this "smart tinkering".
Any attempt to seriously "inflate" away the problem spooks the lenders and they stop lending. Deflation assures that the creditors are at least partially repaid with valuable currency, but it is extraordinarily painful to those leveraged buyers who were counting on "inflation" to bail them out, and iof course certain creditors will be out of luck anyway.
And so, we are at a macroeconomic impasse. I firmly believe that the guys who got us into this mess are not going to be able to get us out. But they sure will try!
