Conservative Libertarian Outpost

What follows is an article that points out the utter failure by the current administration to understand fundamental principles of economics, and just about every other aspect of governing.

The nation’s Kommissar of Economic Cheerleading, a.k.a. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, unveiled his plan to save our ailing economy this week — the so-called Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP). The announcement was punctuated by a much-ballyhooed 500-point surge in the Dow, an indication that the market, at least, likes PPIP. But why wouldn’t it? Investors tend to appreciate “free” money.

At its core, PPIP provides investors with mega-leveraged government financing. Patterned roughly after the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) thrift bailout plan of the late ’80s, PPIP is composed of two parts: The first part addresses “legacy” loans; the second, “legacy” securities. “Legacy,” incidentally, is the new kinder-gentler buzzword for “toxic,” as in “toxic assets,” the former nom du jour for radioactive financial instruments like subprime mortgages and mortgage-derived securities.

PPIP offers private investors enormous amounts of cheap, taxpayer-backed financing for every dollar they put up of their own money. Under the program, government lends up to 85 percent of investor funding, with the Treasury “investing” one dollar of taxpayer money for each private capital dollar to cover the remaining 15 percent.

From an investor’s standpoint, of course, there’s no personal downside. Investors leverage government money at a 6-to-1 ratio and the lion’s share of any losses generated are absorbed by taxpayers. Thus, if a borrower defaults on his mortgage, the government would only be able to seize the real estate — private investors walk away relatively unhurt.

Independent of taxpayer liability, however, the program is not without risk. As indicated by Vincent Reinhart, American Enterprise Institute resident scholar and director of the Monetary Affairs Division of the Federal Reserve, PPIP assumes that “assets are troubled because their true values are obscured by irrational self-doubt and market illiquidity, and not by fundamental problems in the prospects of repayment. It also assumes that the solution to problems created by excessive leverage is for government to encourage more leverage.”

Apart from PPIP, our strategic issue, the elephant in the room, is one of accountability. Helped by a willing media, the central focus has been shifting from Congress and the Executive branches to business. Still, for all the finger pointing at banks and insurers, and for all post-hoc economic crater repairing, we hope those as yet unenlightened Americans who have been blinded by the Obama media will soon learn the origins of this mess: government.

SOURCE

Tags: economics 101, Economy, News, Politics

This entry was posted on April 5, 2009 at 08:13 and is filed under Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Law, News, Non Compos Mentis, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.