"A Bailout We Don't Need"

What appears below is an article by James Galbraith, a named chair economics

professor at the University of Texas, and a worthy son of a great father.  It appeared

originally in the Washington Post, but has been recopied to several hundred sites

on the Web, so I hope that I don't get into trouble by giving it again here.

NB: Those who have read my Article on "The Bailout and the Liberal Response" may

suspect that I stole my ideas from Galbraith<g>.  I swear on a stack of Bibles;  Not So!

(start)

   A Bailout We Don't Need

   By James K. Galbraith
   Thursday, September 25, 2008; A19

   Now that all five big investment banks -- Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch,
   Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- have disappeared
   or morphed into regular banks, a question arises.

   Is this bailout still necessary?

   The point of the bailout is to buy assets that are illiquid but not
   worthless. But regular banks hold assets like that all the time.
   They're called "loans."

   With banks, runs occur only when depositors panic, because they fear
   the loan book is bad. Deposit insurance takes care of that. So why not
   eliminate the pointless $100,000 cap on federal deposit insurance and
   go take inventory? If a bank is solvent, money market funds would flow
   in, eliminating the need to insure those separately. If it isn't, the
   FDIC has the bridge bank facility to take care of that.
   Next, put half a trillion dollars into the Federal Deposit Insurance
   Corp. fund -- a cosmetic gesture -- and as much money into that agency
   and the FBI as is needed for examiners, auditors and investigators.
   Keep $200 billion or more in reserve, so the Treasury can recapitalize
   banks by buying preferred shares if necessary -- as Warren Buffett did
   this week with Goldman Sachs. Review the situation in three months,
   when Congress comes back. Hedge funds should be left on their own. You
   can't save everyone, and those investors aren't poor.

   With this solution, the systemic financial threat should go away. Does
   that mean the economy would quickly recover? No. Sadly, it does not.
   Two vast economic problems will confront the next president
   immediately. First, the underlying housing crisis: There are too many
   houses out there, too many vacant or unsold, too many homeowners
   underwater. Credit will not start to flow, as some suggest, simply
   because the crisis is contained. There have to be borrowers, and there
   has to be collateral. There won't be enough.

   In Texas, recovery from the 1980s oil bust took seven years and the
   pull of strong national economic growth. The present slump is national,
   and it can't be cured that way. But it could be resolved in three
   years, rather than 10, by a new Home Owners Loan Corp., which would
   rewrite mortgages, manage rental conversions and decide when vacant,
   degraded properties should be demolished. Set it up like a draft board
   in each community, under federal guidelines, and get to work.

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