Interesting article at the Washington Post titled ' Late change in course Hobbled Rollout of Geithner's Bank Plan"
According to several sources involved in the deliberations, Geithner had come to the conclusion that the strategies he and his team had spent weeks working on were too expensive, too complex and too risky for taxpayers...
Though Geithner had been in his job for only two weeks, he had been thinking about the problem of troubled assets since the credit crisis erupted 19 months earlier, first as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and then, since November, as Barack Obama's pick to head the Treasury....
Thurgy: He's been thinking about this for 19 months, spent two weeks devising a plan only to have to plan turn out to be a bad one and back to square one.
His predecessor atop Treasury, Henry M. Paulson Jr., had drawn political fire after he unveiled the Bush administration's $700 billion bailout program in September, facing accusations that the money had been spent erratically...
Thurgy: We went from Fire! Aim, Ready? with Paulson to Deer-in-the-headlights Geithner. The expectations have been set very high for this entire Administration.
At the center of the deliberations with Geithner were Lawrence H. Summers, chief White House economic adviser; Lee Sachs, a Clinton administration official likely to be named undersecretary for domestic finance; and Gene Sperling, another former Clinton aide. The debates among them were long and vigorous as they thrashed countless proposals and variations. Sometimes, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila C. Bair and Comptroller of the Currency John C. Dugan joined in...
Thurgy: I see a couple of problems here. The most obvious is Volcker not being included. Apparently his tough-love approach doesn't mesh well with Geithners bank-friendly ideas. The second is the former Clinton people all over the place.
There are more good tidbits to be found in the entire article. I'm surprised we didnt have $100M in stimulus to put towards government blackberrys.
