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For a portion of the $700 Billion Paulson is requesting we could have available credit by using that money as equity for new banks.  If the banks could pay back the equity, they could be independent.  Either way they could provide Trillions of new credit.  If existing credit is being destroyed, this would not necessarily be inflationary.  Once the new banks started functioning, the existing banks that are viable would have to start making loans or they would massively lose market share.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Sep 24th, 2008 at 09:01:06 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Well, at a 3% reserve ratio, $700bn allow over $20tn of credit. Just orders of magnitude here, but you get the picture.

A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 02:59:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I was being more conservative at a 15/1 ratio, but yeah, we don't have to take the dynamite enema route to solve this crisis, although that may be our leader's choice.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 09:51:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The problem is that if a "compromise" is achieved on the Paulson/Dodd proposals on the Hill, even if all the economists in the land blog that it's a bad compromise, it will be adopted (by definition of "compromise"). And then when things go pear-shaped every commentator will blame the Bush administration, the Republicans or the Democrats according to their prejudices.

A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 10:12:28 AM EST
[ Parent ]
And the really big problem with that is that the Bad Guys have many more pundits than we do.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Sep 25th, 2008 at 02:15:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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