The plan will work so good, then the Social Security trust fund will now be placed into the Stock market, because they'll say SEE it does work.

No guts, no glory, Dean.

The international financial system would be in better shape now and in the longer term if its "book" liquidity suffered some real, serious "demand destruction." I don't know the number -- how about $6-10 trillion worldwide?

If these guys are so smart (and you wouldn't be giving them the keys to the castle if you didn't think they were), why don't we demand that they "liquidate" these shadow bankers (SIVs, hedge funds, and all the other highly leveraged "casino comp'ed players").

Break it down and build it back up!

P.S. Let's play the Ultimatum Game. And believe me, I'm game to take some pain if a moral society, a fair society, is the outcome.

A simple question/proposal

Since practically everyone is cashing out of everything and desperately seeking the security of short-term Treasuries or mattresses, why not create a GSE Money Market Fund(s). Like other money-market funds, it could invest in longer term Treasuries and other gilt-edged securities and might even pay better than T-Bills at present. Such a fund could:

- Calm a lot, really a lot, of the current panic.
- Relieve hoarding of T-Bills and other Treasuries and maybe unlock repo markets.
- Reduce the risk to taxpayers of expanding FDIC insurance to cover all deposits. (Why should we be expected to bear more downside risk while banks are failing all around us with absolutely no extra upside?)
- Provide leverage to the Fed and Treasury to negotiate with Wall Street.

When markets calm down, the fund could pay the lowest rates to investors and charge the highest for borrowers. That way it is practically non-competitive with the private sector. Its main selling point would be its security.

GSE's have been getting dissed lately because of Fannie and Freddie but just like FEMA, the basic ideas are sound, you just need good people running them.

Bob Dole once quipped that the most dangerous place to stand in Washington was between a TV camera and Chuck Schumer.

Nowadays, Schumer's spot appears to have been taken over by our liberal public policy economists -- so anxious to get that call from the News Hour they've turned themselves into "serious" experts -- unimaginative parroters of the conventional wisdom and thus, acceptable to the adults in Washington.

A bunch of drones!

Am I the only one to realize that "voting shares", or common stock, has no voting power in a corporation? It is a fact of physics that you can't divide anything into ever smaller parts indefinitely. Eventually you reach the point where the parts are infinitessmal, of no significance at all. If I buy one share of General Motors, all I am doing is gambling. I don't own even a smidgeon of General Motors. One share out of 100,000 is a dust mote, to be blown out the window and forgotten.

Shares of stock in corporations, until you get a significant percentage of the outstanding shares, are not ownership of anything but a gamble. Those stocks typically pay zero dividends. Your only hope of making money off of them is that someone more stupid than you will be willing to pay more for them than you did. You could buy baseball trading cards with the same risk.

Preferred shares, which are what we are talking about here are a bit different. At least those stock owners have a slightly better chance of getting something back for their "investment". So, that, in my opinion, is exactly what the government should be buying. Leave the gambling to the gamblers.