It is going to take a lot of time for this entity to get set up and find willing private partners and, together with them (or thanks to their superior market know-how), analyse the often very complex vehicles involved.

Meanwhile, an audit is going to estimate the banks' exposure to bad stuff. (How that is to be done convincingly without evaluating assets I don't see). There will then be an injection of a capital "buffer", and/or nationalisation (according to the Trojan Horse theory). This may well occur well before the PPIF has got far in its price-setting and allocation tasks. What use will it then be, what will be its role?

I think that if major American banks are nationalised, that will be because it becomes inevitable, not because this unclear, confused communication from Geithner masks a cunning plan to reach that goal without Wall Street seeing it coming.