"The federal government is working on a sweeping series of programs that would represent perhaps the biggest intervention in financial markets since the 1930s, embracing the need for a comprehensive approach to the financial crisis after a series of ad hoc rescues. At the center of the potential plan is a mechanism that would take bad assets off the balance sheets of financial companies, said people familiar with the matter, a device that echoes similar moves taken in past financial crises. The size of the entity could reach hundreds of billions of dollars, one person said."
After years of deregulation, of promotion of greed and assertion of the superiority of the market, and in particular of financial makrets to decide how to run the economy, it appears - nay, make that: it is now blatantly, in your face, obvious - that none of this worked. Worse, the people that have mocked government throughout, as wasteful, inefficient and incompetent are now counting on the very same government to bail them out from the hole they have dug.
They made out like bandits during the "boom" years of the boom-AND-bust cycle they brought about with their policy suggestions, looting the middle classes in the process and are now trying - may, make that "succeeding" - to not bear the consequences of the same policies.
Peacenik thinks this brief piece by Jerome a Paris, a frequent contributor to the Oil Drum, is a succinct summary of the situation.
