Even Krugman is Criticizing the White House

Paul Krugman may be the person most responsible for the stimulus fiasco by using his soap box at the New York Times. He has wooed his sychophants in the broader media and the Democratic party and convinced them to hurl the country towards a new soft socialism. But now, even he is beginning to question the choices and competancy of Tim Geithner as well as the Fed.

First here,

Every plan we’ve heard from Treasury amounts to the same thing — an attempt to socialize the losses while privatizing the gains. We’re going to buy up all the bad assets at premium prices; no, we’re going to offer the banks guarantees against losses; no, we’re going to let private investors buy the stuff, but offer them de facto guarantees against losses in the form of non-recourse loans.
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And the insistence on offering the same plan over and over again, with only cosmetic changes, is itself deeply disturbing. Does Treasury not realize that all these proposals amount to the same thing? Or does it realize that, but hope that the rest of us won’t notice? That is, are they stupid, or do they think we’re stupid?

And then some righteous anger about AIG's 4th bailout here:

AIG is in trouble because it wrote many credit default swaps, in effect guaranteeing others against losses it lacked the resources to cover. We, the taxpayers, are now covering those losses, for fear that not doing so would cause a financial catastrophe. But this means that US taxpayers have now assumed the downside risks for all of AIG’s counterparties.

In effect, then, we’ve already nationalized a large part of the financial industry’s potential losses.

So at the very least, we have a right to know who the counterparties are: who are we subsidizing, here? And beyond that, shouldn’t there be some quid pro quo? Shouldn’t the US government get something in return for taking on so much of the risk?

My advice to Obama: Fire Geithner, the markets would soar!