LET ... INSOLVENT ... BANKS ... FAIL

The Congressional panel overseeing the bailout is blasting the government's approach, saying that the government has to close insolvent banks. Some quotes from the panel's new report:

All successful efforts to address bank crises have involved the combination of moving aside failed management and getting control of the process of valuing bank balance sheets...

[Bank liquidation would be] least likely to sap the patience of taxpayers [and] provides clarity relatively quickly [to the markets]....

Allowing institutions to fail in a structured manner supervised by appropriate regulators offers a clearer exit strategy than allowing those institutions to drift into government control piecemeal.

The following experts agree that the insolvent banks should be liquidated to save the broader economy:

• The head of the FDIC, Sheila Bair

• President of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank Thomas Hoenig

• The recently retired President of the St. Louis Fed, William Poole.

• Nobel prize-winning economist Ed Prescott

• Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz

• The leading monetary economist and co-author with Milton Friedman of the leading treatise on the Great Depression, Anna Schwartz.

• Economics professor and senior regulator of the S & L crisis, William K. Black

• Highly-regarded PhD economist Michael Hudson

• PhD economist Marc Faber

• The central banks' central bank, BIS

• Many other leading economists

The choice could not be more clear: Break up the insolvent banks in an orderly manner, or the economy will not recover for many, many years.

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