I mentioned this briefly last night, but I want to highlight this short passage from Obama’s speech again:
I intend to hold these banks fully accountable for the assistance they receive, and this time, they will have to clearly demonstrate how taxpayer dollars result in more lending for the American taxpayer. This time, CEOs won’t be able to use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks or buy fancy drapes or disappear on a private jet. Those days are over.
Still, this plan will require significant resources from the federal government — and yes, probably more than we’ve already set aside. But while the cost of action will be great, I can assure you that the cost of inaction will be far greater, for it could result in an economy that sputters along for not months or years, but perhaps a decade.
The first paragraph starts us off with some excellent populist banker bashing. You can almost feel the pitchforks and torches in the air. But it’s just a carnival barker’s trick designed to misdirect. In the second paragraph, delivered so quickly you could be forgiven for missing it, we get the substance: “This plan will require significant resources from the federal
government — and yes, probably more than we’ve already set aside.”
Bottom line: we intend to keep shoveling money into America’s big banks. But we don’t really intend to get anything for it.
Here’s the best interpretation I can put on this. Obama knows that he’s very likely going to have to nationalize one or more banks over the next few months. But he also knows that talking about it openly is disastrous. Like it or not, it just is. So the only way for it to work is to deny, deny, deny right up until the day you stop denying. Then you make a clean sweep: you take over whichever banks you need to and give the rest a firm, credible clean bill of health. And everyone can get on with business.
Maybe this is wishful thinking on my part. But I hope this is what’s going on.
