Whether he deserves it or not, Timothy Geithner has become the poster boy for everything that's wrong with the government's scatterbrain financial rescue plan. Geithner was in the wheelhouse at the New York Fed when Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros defaulted, and he has played a central role in the $165 million AIG bonus scandal which has ignited a populist firestorm across the country. Now everything even remotely connected to the bank bailout has become a source of fist-clinching rage. The mood of the country has darkened from the steady downpour of bad economic news, the sharp decline in housing prices and the steep rise in unemployment. People are angry at the government, the banks and Wall Street. Their nerves are frayed and their patience is stretched to the limit.

It is in this atmosphere of simmering public fury that Geithner will announce the details of his long-awaited plan for removing up to $1 trillion of toxic assets from the balance sheets of some of the country's biggest banks. Information about Geithner's "Public-Private Partnership" and the so called Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) has been spotty so far, but enough is known about the plan to predict that it will likely be the noose into which Geithner thrusts his scrawny neck bringing his dismal career at Treasury to a end. The country will not endure another pretentious-sounding banker-friendly flim flam, which is precisely what Geithner has in mind.

According to the Associated Press:

"Officials said Geithner’s plan will have three major parts. One part will be an effort Geithner spoke about last month - the creation of a public-private partnership to back purchases of bad assets by private investors... Treasury will hire four or five investment management firms, matching the private money that each of the firms puts up with government funds.

A second part of the plan will expand a recently launched program being run by the Federal Reserve called the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF.

That program is providing loans for investors to buy assets backed by consumer debt in an effort to make it easier for consumers to get auto, student and credit card loans. Under Geithner’s proposal, this program would be expanded to support investors’ purchases of banks’ toxic assets.

The third part of the Geithner plan would utilize the resources of the FDIC, the agency that guarantees bank deposits, to purchase toxic assets. Officials said that the FDIC will create special purpose investment partnerships and then lend those partnerships money so that they can buy up troubled assets." (AP)

Why in heaven's name would Sheila Bair attach her good name to Treasury's latest bunko-scam? As Bair undoubtedly knows, the main objective of the Public-Private Partnership and TALF is to provide inflated prices for garbage assets that investors refuse to buy. It's just a way of transferring losses from the banks to the taxpayer by using a middleman who looks like a partner but only has a 5 percent stake in the game. This is Timmy's circuitous way of socking it to the public one more time. Here's how Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism explains it:

"First, the banks, as in normal auctions, will presumably set a reserve price equal to the value of the assets on their books. If the price does not meet the reserve (and the level of the reserve is not disclosed to the bidders), there is no sale; in this case, the bank would keep the toxic instruments.

Having the banks realize a price at least equal to the value they hold it at on their books is a boundary condition. If the banks sell the assets as a lower level, it will result in a loss, which is a direct hit to equity. The whole point of this exercise is to get rid of the bad paper without further impairing the banks."

Okay, so the auctions are rigged and the banks get overpaid for toxic waste. Surprised? Geithner's task from Day 1 has been to keep the money flowing from the vault at Treasury to the big banks. This is just more of the same. The TALF and the PPP are just clever acronyms meaning "corporate welfare" which is ladled out to bank tycoons who have their agents working the levers from the inside. The public, of course, takes it in the shorts once again.

Yves Smith puts it like this:

"Dear God, the Administration really thinks the public is full of idiots. But there are so many components to the program, and a lot of moving parts in each, they no doubt expect everyone's eyes to glaze over." (Public Private partnership emerging, Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism)

Geithner has been trying for weeks to lure hedge funds and private equity firms into participating in his program offering up to 95 percent leverage for the purchase of the banks bad assets. By providing loan guarantees rather than capital, Geithner can (in the words of the Wall Street Journal's David Wessel) "rely on the Federal Reserve's amazing ability to come up with unlimited sums without congressional consent." This means that Geithner has moved on to Plan B which makes good use of Bernanke's deep pockets and well-oiled printing press.

Geithner's strategy is nothing more than a trillion dollar stealth bailout of the country's biggest banks. The funding from the TALF and PPP are just the first part of a one-two knockout punch. Treasury will try to show that it paid less for the assets than their current book-value (which, of course, is grossly inflated) and then follow up with generous capital injections from the TARP program to make up the difference. That way, the banks will be "made whole" again while the public gets the double whammy. Geithner is hoping that the public relations hype surrounding the program will allow him to carry out his strategy before anyone figures out what's really going on. Fortunately, the blogosphere is following every little detail, which means that the plan will be picked apart just minutes after it is released. If the commentariat gives it the "thumbs down", there's a good chance that Geithner will have to pack it in and resign. His credibility was wobbly to begin with. A failure here would surely be the last straw. Senator Richard Shelby, voiced the concerns of many elected representatives when he said on FOX News Sunday, that Geithner was on "shaky ground" and that "If he keeps going down this road, he won’t last long.” By late Monday, we should know whether Geithner will continue to serve at Treasury or hobble back to his dingy rookery at Kissinger and Associates.

The New York Times writes:

"The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will set up special-purpose investment partnerships and lend about 85 percent of the money that those partnerships will need to buy up troubled assets that banks want to sell.

... Private investors, then, would be contributing as little as 3 percent of the equity, and the government as much as 97 percent."

The idea that 97 percent "low interest" funding constitutes a "partnership", boggles the mind. Where can a businessman or a homeowner get gravy a deal like that? The Treasury is providing a subsidy to Wall Street crooksters to manage taxpayer money so they can fatten their own bottom line. It's that simple. Geithner's not only willing to empty the public purse for his buddies but, also, write another trillion dollar check on an account that is already overdrawn by $11 trillion. This is one gigantic looting operation concocted by bank lobbyists masquerading as public officials.

The whole purpose of the Geithner shakedown is to mislead the public. Why should the perilously underfunded FDIC provide a non-recourse loans to hedge fund sharpies and PE scalawags when its primary responsibility is to protect bank depositors? And why are they setting up more of the same Enron-type "off-balance sheets" special purpose vehicles which blew up the financial markets to begin with? This has disaster written all over it. The non recourse loans create a "no lose" situation for investors who can dump any type of crappy mortgage-backed sludge into the program and not worry about any legal backlash. Here's how Paul Krugman sums it up:

"The Geithner plan has now been leaked in detail. It’s exactly the plan that was widely analyzed — and found wanting — a couple of weeks ago. The zombie ideas have won.

The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system — that what we’re facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to pay for it, all our problems will be solved.

To this end the plan proposes to create funds in which private investors put in a small amount of their own money, and in return get large, non-recourse loans from the taxpayer, with which to buy bad — I mean misunderstood — assets. This is supposed to lead to fair prices because the funds will engage in competitive bidding....

This plan will produce big gains for banks that didn’t actually need any help; it will, however, do little to reassure the public about banks that are seriously undercapitalized. And I fear that when the plan fails, as it almost surely will, the administration will have shot its bolt: it won’t be able to come back to Congress for a plan that might actually work." (Paul Krugman's blog)

Geithner's plan is a catastrophe. It's just a sloppy remake of Paulson's failed Super SIV that was supposed to save Citi from massive losses but closed without a single sale. Not one investor stepped forward to buy assets even though Paulson slapped the Treasury's seal of approval on entire operation. It was a complete bust. Now Geithner is following in the ex-Treasury Secretary's footsteps.

The banks are not going to fix themselves. Only government can do that, which means that someone will have to fill the leadership void and do the heavy lifting. But time is running out and the problems are getting worse. Public support is on the wane. Obama should take advantage of what little confidence in the system is left and take radical corrective action. Insolvent financial institutions have to be taken into receivership and liquidated. Shareholders and bondholders will have to take a haircut. And Geithner, Summers and the rest of the White House banking fraternity will have to resign or be fired. Obama should mull over Albert Einstein's sage advice when he said, "The problems we face today cannot be solved by the minds that created them."

Read also this:

Obama and "Geithner Put". The PPIF and TALF: it would offer investors a one-way bet: if the assets rise in price, investors win; if they fall substantially, investors walk away and leave the taxpayers holding the bag.

The Geithner Put
Timothy Geithner is putting the finishing touches on a plan that will dump $1 trillion of toxic assets onto the US taxpayer. The plan, which goes by the opaque moniker the "Public-Private Investment Fund" (PPIF), is designed to provide lavish incentives to hedge funds and private equity firms to purchase bad assets from failing banks. It is a sweetheart deal that provides government financing and guarantees for illiquid mortgage-backed junk for which there is no active market. As one might expect, the charismatic President Obama has been called in to generate public support for this latest addition to the TARP bailout. In this week's address to Congress he said:

“This administration is moving swiftly and aggressively to restore confidence, and re-start lending.
“We will do so in several ways. First, we are creating a new lending fund that represents the largest effort ever to help provide auto loans, college loans, and small business loans to the consumers and entrepreneurs who keep this economy running."

The Obama administration is clearly afraid to use the shifty Geithner to sell this boondoggle to the American people. Geithner's last performance put the equities markets into a swan-dive.

Details of the plan remain sketchy, but the PPIF will work in concert with the Fed's new lending facility, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF, which will start operating in March and will provide up to $1 trillion of financing for buyers of new securities backed by credit card, auto and small-business loans. Geithner's financial rescue "partnership" will also focus on cleaning up banks balance sheets by purging mortgage-backed securities (MBS).

In Monday's New york Times, Paul Krugman summed up the Geithner plan like this:
"Now the administration is talking about a “public-private partnership” to buy troubled assets from the banks, with the government lending money to private investors for that purpose. This would offer investors a one-way bet: if the assets rise in price, investors win; if they fall substantially, investors walk away and leave the government holding the bag. Again, heads they win, tails we lose.

Why not just go ahead and nationalize?"
Why not, indeed, except for the fact that Geithner's and his boss’s main objective is to "keep the banks in private hands" regardless of the cost to the taxpayer. The Treasury Secretary believes that if he presents his plan a "lending program" rather than another trillion dollar freebie from Uncle Sam, he'll have a better chance slipping it by Congress and thereby preserving the present management structure at the banks. Keeping the banking giants intact is "Job 1" at the Treasury.

The PPIF is a way of showering speculators with subsidies to purchase non-performing loans at bargain-basement prices. The Fed is using a similar strategy with the TALF which, according to the New York Times, could easily generate "annual returns of 20 percent or more" for those who borrow from the facility.

From the New York Times:
"Under the program, the Fed will lend to investors who acquire new securities backed by auto loans, credit card balances, student loans and small-business loans at rates ranging from roughly 1.5 percent to 3 percent.
“Depending on the type of security they are borrowing against, investors will be able to borrow 84 percent to 95 percent of the face value of the bonds. Investors would not be liable for any losses beyond the 5 percent to 16 percent equity that they retain in the investment.
“In the initial phase, the Treasury will provide $20 billion and the Fed will provide $180 billion. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said last week that the Treasury could increase its commitment to $100 billion to allow the Fed to lend up to $1 trillion."

This is a ripoff, which is why the plan is being concealed behind abstruse acronyms and complex explanations of how the transactions actually work. The only way investors can lose money is if they hold on to the securities after they fall below 16 percent of their original value which, of course, is unlikely, since the buyers can bail out at any time leaving the taxpayer holding the bag. Call it the "Geithner Put", another gift from Uncle Sugar to Wall Street land-sharks.

Geithner thinks that by obfuscating the details of his plan, he'll be able to carry it off with no one the wiser. But he's mistaken. His credibility has already been badly battered by his chronic evasiveness. Now the pundits are blaming him for falling consumer confidence and the plummeting stock market.

It is no surprise that the Fed announced its expansion of the TALF on the same day that Geithner presented his outline for a "public-private partnership". The two plans represent the Obama Team's strategy for "squaring the circle", that is, for keeping the big banks in private hands while purging their balance sheets of worthless assets at the public's expense. Here's how it's presented on the Fed's website:

"Under the TALF, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York will provide non-recourse funding to any eligible borrower owning eligible collateral... As the loan is non-recourse, if the borrower does not repay the loan, the New York Fed will enforce its rights in the collateral and sell the collateral to a special purpose vehicle (SPV) established specifically for the purpose of managing such assets... The TALF loan is non-recourse except for breaches of representations, warranties and covenants, as further specified in the MLSA"

Non-recourse funding? In other words, the loans will be like mortgages, where if the homeowner finds that he is underwater, he can just walk away and leave the bank to cover the losses? In this case, it is the taxpayer who will be left taking the loss.

The PPIF is basically the same deal, 90 percent government-funded "no risk" financing offered to the same speculators who just blew up the financial system. It's a scam. The process allows Geithner to avoid assigning a market value to these garbage assets that no one wants. That means that he's planning to pay inflated prices--up to $1 trillion-- to keep the banks happy. Once their balance sheets are scrubbed clean, the banks can begin engineering their next swindle. Meanwhile, the hedge funds and private equity firms will demand refunds for the toxic waste they bought but cannot offload on skeptical investors. Once again, the government will pick up the tab.

Does Geithner really think he can sneak this through?
The markets aren't going to like the idea of recapitalizing the banks through the backdoor. Wall Street will see right through the smoke n' mirrors and hit the "sell" button. If the banks need recapitalizing, they will have to do it the old fashion way. They'll have to restructure their capital, which means that shareholders get the ax, bond holders get a haircut, management gets the door, and the American people become majority shareholders. That's how it works in a free market. When businesses are insolvent; they file for bankruptcy and the debts are written down. Geithner could save us all a lot of trouble by just doing his job and nationalizing them now.

The Baseline Scenario's Simon Johnson put it perfectly when he said:
"Above all, we need to encourage or, most likely, force the large insolvent banks to break up. Their political power needs to be broken, and the only way to do that is to pull apart their economic empires. It doesn’t have to be done immediately, but it needs to be a clearly stated goal and metric for the entire reprivatization process."

Read also this:

why Bernanke's Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) ( A shameless $1 trillion corporate welfare ) is not going to work
"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."
n John Kenneth Galbraith
n
When George Soros recently said that the financial system had "effectively disintegrated", it caused quite a flap. But Soros was not exaggerating. The financial system has disintegrated. What we are experiencing now is just the fallout from that event. This is easier to understand using an analogy. Imagine watching the demolition of a hundred-story skyscraper. After the explosives detonate and the building implodes, the chunks of debris and the shattered glass begin to fall to the ground below. That's where we are right now. The financial super-structure has already been blown to bits, but a thick shower of fragments keeps raining down on earth. Rising unemployment, falling consumer confidence, severe contraction of the economy, growing pessimism; these are all the knock-on effects of a full-blown system collapse.

In 2008, the source of funding for residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), consumer asset-backed securities (which include everything from student loans, credit cards, and auto loans) and home equity loans almost completely dried up. In fact, all that's left of the previously vibrant credit markets, is the agency mortgage-backed securities sold through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which rely exclusively on government funding. Apart from government sponsored GSEs, their is no mortgage credit.

What does it all mean? It means that Wall Street's credit-generating mechanism has disintegrated, cutting off 40 per cent of the blood-flow to the economy. This is why the drop in spending has been so sudden and precipitous. No economy, however strong, can reduce credit by 40 per cent without sliding into a depression. Every area of industry, trade, investment, commerce and consumption has been battered. No sector has been spared. Housing will continue to plummet, because the primary funding mechanism for selling mortgages no longer exists; all the applications are now shoveled over to Fannie and Freddie. Wall Street has gone A.W.O.L.

The often repeated mantra "the banks aren't lending" is a myth. The banks are lending; it is the wholesale funding apparatus that's broken. That's why the Fed's low interest rates have had little effect, because they don't increase sales in the secondary market where MBS and other complex investments are sold. Those markets are frozen due to investor angst. People are scared out of their wits. Toxic subprime mortgages poisoned the well and now investors have boycotted the entire market for structured debt-instruments. Until there is some resolution on the true value of the underlying assets, the market will remain paralyzed. Investors want price discovery, something that is basic to every market. Here's what Bank of America's CEO Ken Lewis said in the Wall Street Journal on Monday:
"The banks aren't lending. This claim is simply not true. Yes, banks have tightened lending standards after a period in which standards were too lax. But, according to Federal Reserve data, bank credit has actually increased over the course of this recession, and business lending is trending up modestly so far in 2009. Also, mortgage finance volume is booming as a result of low interest rates. What's gone from the system is the easy credit that got us into this mess, as unregulated nonbank lenders have disappeared, and the market for many asset-backed securities has all but dried up. Most banks are making as many loans as we responsibly can, given the recessionary environment."

The collapse of securitization (the bundling of pools of loans into securities sold at market) has sucked more than $1.2 trillion from the credit markets and forced a cycle of de-leveraging throughout the financial system. The idea that securities-based lending was viable was predicated on the belief that self-interested speculators could sustain the flow of credit to the system. That notion turned out to be catastrophically wrong. Not only did financial institutions increase their risk exposure by loading up on long-term illiquid assets, (MBS, CDOs, CDSs) they also borrowed heavily on those dodgy assets so they could skim the cream off the top and add to their 7-digit incomes and lavish bonuses. PIMCO's Bill Gross gave an apt summary of shadow banking system in a newsletter to his investors last year:

"Our modern shadow banking system craftily dodges the reserve requirements of traditional institutions and promotes a chain letter, pyramid scheme of leverage, based in many cases on no reserve cushion whatsoever. Financial derivatives of all descriptions are involved but credit default swaps (CDS) are perhaps the most egregious offenders. While margin does flow periodically to balance both party’s accounts, the conduits that hold CDS contracts are in effect non-regulated banks, much like their hedge fund brethren, with no requirements to hold reserves against a significant "black swan" run that might break them. Jimmy Stewart—they hardly knew ye! According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), CDS totaling $43 trillion were outstanding at year end 2007, more than half the size of the entire asset base of the global banking system. Total derivatives amount to over $500 trillion, many of them finding their way onto the balance sheets of SIVs, CDOs and other conduits of their ilk comprising the Frankensteinian levered body of shadow banks.
Pyramid schemes and chain letters collapse because there is no more credit to feed them. As the system of modern day levered shadow finance slows to a crawl, or even contracts at the edges, its ability to systemically fertilize economic growth must be called into question."

The problem is not simply that securitization has blown up, but that Geithner and pal Bernanke are determined to sift through through the rubble to see if they can fit the pieces together again. It's Humpty Dumpty redux. This is what Bernanke's Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) is really all about; another pointless attempt to fire-up Wall Street's failed credit assembly-line, securitization. TALF is set to begin in the middle of March and will ultimately get up to $1 trillion of Fed funding for securitized loans made on credit cards, car loans and student loans. But the plan ignores the fact that the wholesale credit markets already conked out after their first big stress-test and that consumers are no longer in a position to increase their debtload. Consumer debt is already at 100 percent of GDP, and that's before the recession slashed home equity values by 30 per cent and 401ks by 40 per cent. That is why personal savings have gone from negative territory in 2006 to positive 5 percent in just 2 quarters. Attitudes towards consumption have done an about-face almost overnight. Bernanke's TALF isn' t necessary; what's needed is debt relief and a smaller financial system that meets the new reality.

Besides, what's the point of moving toxic assets from one balance sheet to another or providing another handout to the scamsters and flim flam men at the hedge funds and private equity firms? They're the ones who drove the system into the ditch in the first place. Peter Eavis of the Wall Street Journal explains:
"The Fed needs to lure investors back into the market for these asset-backed securities, or ABS, where new issuance has almost disappeared This has led to a contraction in lending to consumers, deepening the recession. In the fourth quarter of 2008, there wasn't any issuance of U.S. credit-card ABS, compared with $23 billion a year before, according to Dealogic...
The TALF ladles out that leverage, and it may well work in kick-starting the moribund market. For instance, investors can borrow $92 million to buy $100 million of bonds backed with prime auto loans. An investment firm would have levered its equity over 12 times, which could provide annual returns of over 20 per cent on prime-auto ABS assuming no credit impairment." (Wall Street Journal, The Fed goes for brokerage)

Sound familiar? What's even worse than providing the leverage for the hedge fund sharpies, is the fact that the Fed will not require that investors post collateral (like a bank) and -- if the assets fall in value -- investors can just "walk away" leaving taxpayers to eat the losses. Such a deal! It's another shameless $1 trillion corporate welfare boondoggle disguised as a financial rescue plan. This shows that the reprobate Fed and its accomplices at Treasury are still committed to keeping the credit monopoly in private hands whether it destroys the country or not. The best remedy would be abandon the securitization model altogether (if only for the time being) so resources could be devoted to more pressing issues like jobs programs and debt relief. These would have an immediate stimulative effect on economy by revving up consumer spending and restoring faith in government. Otherwise, they are just dumping more money into a dysfunctional system.
Whether the Obama administration fixes the credit markets or not, it will still have to recapitalize the banking system. The most efficient way would be to take over insolvent institutions, separate the bad assets, protect the depositors and give management the pink slip. The problem with removing the bad assets, however, is the sheer magnitude of the losses. There's enough red ink here to stretch from sea to shining sea. Here's David Smick in the Washington Post:

"Here's the problem: Today's true market value of the U.S. banks' toxic assets (that ugly stuff that needs to be removed from bank balance sheets before the economy can recover) amounts to between 5 and 30 cents on the dollar. To remain solvent, however, the banks say they need a valuation of 50 to 60 cents on the dollar. Translation: as much as another $2 trillion taxpayer bailout.
That kind of expensive solution could send the president's approval rating into a nose dive. Consider: $2 trillion is about two-thirds of the tax revenue the federal government collects each year." (Tim Geithner's Black Hole, David Smick Washington Post)

And, it's not just the expense that keeps Geithner from taking swift action either. It's also the prospect of systemic failure from unregulated counterparty contracts, mainly credit default swaps, which have tied all the major banks together in a lethal net of highly-leveraged bets. If one of the financial giants keels over, the others will follow like lemmings. This is why the government took over AIG and has provided a $160 billion bailout, to stop the dominoes from tumbling through the global system. Geithner has decided that it’s wiser to make excuses and try to run out the clock, than stumble blindly through the derivatives minefield. Unfortunately, the clock is ticking and the problems can't wait.The loss of wealth is already so huge that it has blown a gaping capital-hole in the financial system, triggering an unprecedented slowdown similar to the 1930s. According to Bloomberg:

"The value of global financial assets including stocks, bonds and currencies probably fell by more than $50 trillion in 2008, equivalent to a year of world gross domestic product, according to an Asian Development Bank report."...Blackstone's CEO Stephen Schwarzman said on Tuesday that "Between 40 and 45 percent of the world's wealth has been destroyed in little less than a year and a half. This is absolutely unprecedented in our lifetime."

As capital is destroyed and credit tightens, consumers have gotten more defensive, inventories are bulging, unemployment is rising, retail and housing have continued to nosedive, asset values are shrinking, profits are dwindling and the economy has succumbed to the slow strangulation of a credit-python. Deflation has spread across all sectors; strengthening the dollar and pushing oil and commodities downward. Equities are in a deep slump that will only get worse. The S&P has already dropped 56 percent from its peak and is quickly somersaulting downward. Deflation is everywhere.
David Rosenberg, Economist at Merrill Lynch summed it up in "Depression-Style Jobs Report":
"In addition to credit contraction, asset deflation, profit compression and employment destruction, we are also in a vicious inventory reduction phase in the manufacturing sector. If our forecast is correct, this would then suggest that the capacity utilization rate in manufacturing will make a new all-time low of 66.6% from 68% in January. The employment data also tell us that there is a very high probability that wages and salaries deflated -0.3% in February as well. How we end up getting any sustained inflation pressure, or backup in bond yields for that matter, as the economy moves further and further away from any semblance of “full employment” in either the labor or product market, is totally beyond us.

The Fed’s balance sheet and the balance sheet of the federal government are expanding at record rates. But these reflationary efforts should be seen as a partial antidote, not a panacea, to the deflationary effects brought on from the unprecedented contraction in the largest balance sheet on the planet: The $55 trillion US household balance sheet. Based on what house prices and equity valuation have been doing this quarter, we are likely in for a total loss of household net worth approximating $7 trillion this quarter alone, which would bring the cumulative decline in consumer wealth to $20 trillion. This wealth loss exceeds the combined expansion of the Fed’s and government balance sheet by a factor of ten. That should put the reflation-deflation debate into perspective." (David Rosenberg, Economist at Merrill Lynch summed it up like this in "Depression-Style Jobs Report": Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis)

Clearly, the capital hole in the center of the US economy is too huge to be filled with Obama's $787 billion stimulus. (Most of the stimulus is back-loaded anyway. Only $200 billion will be spent creating jobs in 2009) When businesses and consumers stop spending, the government has to pick up the slack or the economy gets hammered. Obama's job is to ignore the braying of the liquidationists and crybaby Republicans in the Congress. This is not the time for cold feet. Dazzle the naysayers with footwork. If Obama does not meet the challenge and accept the unavoidably huge deficits, thousands of businesses will default, unemployment will skyrocket, and world trade will grind to a halt. Consider this warning from economics professor Barry Eichengreen in the San Francisco Chronicle: "We must keep Trade from falling off a cliff"
"Americans may not realize it, but the biggest threat to economic stability is not falling home prices and retail spending but collapsing world trade. The value of global merchandise exports was down fully 45 percent in November 2008 from 12 months before. This is a terrifying number.
Nothing remotely comparable has ever happened before - not even in the Great Depression of the 1930s.
This is a body blow to an already staggering U.S. economy. U.S. exports in the fourth quarter of last year fell by more than 25 percent in constant dollars. California is being hit especially hard: outbound container traffic from the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles was down 30 percent in December 2008 from a year earlier.
It's not surprising that when global growth slows, trade growth slows. But this trade implosion is unprecedented even for a major recession.( Barry Eichengreen, San Francisco Chronicle: "We must keep Trade from falling off a cliff")
Trade credit has dried up and reversed capital flows; another casualty of the credit market crackup. Globalization has returned to the realm of (corporate) wishful thinking; look for it in the "fiction" section of the library. No sandal-clad, fist-waving anarchist put the torch to global trade. It was crushed by a poorly-designed financial system that split into matchwood at the first strong breeze. So, how in the world are Bernanke and Geithner going to recapitalize the banks and "keep them in private hands" in the most hostile economic environment in memory?
The only hope is to do the unthinkable; dispatch the FDIC storm troopers to the teetering banks on Friday night and shut down the biggest offenders pronto. Don't wait another minute. The real reason Geithner is stalling is because he's afraid that foreign bondholders will cut him off at the knees and stop purchasing US debt. That's a threat that has to be taken seriously, but it shouldn't stop him from doing his job. John Hussman explains it all in his weekly comment "Buckle Up":
"The misguided policy response from Washington has focused almost exclusively on squandering public money and burdening our children with indebtedness in order to defend the bondholders of mismanaged financial institutions....
Make no mistake. Buying up “troubled assets” will not materially ease this crisis, nor will it even improve the capital position of financial institutions. Homeowners will continue to default because their payment obligations have not been restructured to any meaningful extent. We are simply protecting the bondholders of mismanaged financial institutions, even though that bondholder capital is more than sufficient to cover the losses without harm to customers. Institutions that cannot survive without continual provision of public funds should be taken into receivership, their assets should be restructured to better ensure repayment, their stockholders should be wiped out, bondholders should take a major haircut, customer assets should (and will) be fully protected, and these institutions should be re-issued to the markets when the economy stabilizes." (John P. Hussman Ph.D., Hussman Funds, Buckle Up, www.hussmanfunds.com)
Bondholders own everything and they shouldn't be trifled with. They represent foreign banks, governments, sovereign wealth funds, and industry giants. They can afford the losses better than the taxpayer, but they won't be happy about it. There's bound to be retaliation and gnashing of teeth. It will require a carefully executed strategy to avoid a bloodbath; a surprise incision with a razor-sharp scalpel followed by an Obama-led public relations campaign to placate the enraged bondholders. It won't be easy, but it has to be done, and fast. Unfortunately, we are no where near the point where anyone at Treasury or the Fed will set aside the corporate agenda long enough to do the people's work. That's why Geithner will have to go. Bernanke, too.