Bernanke: Not Only Should Taxpayers Buy the Toxic Waste, They Should Pay Premium Prices for It

Cryptogon
September 24, 2008

In a sane world, these monsters would be torn limb from limb and shredded into maggot food—a role in which they could actually do some good.

Drill holes around the base of a bucket. Place some banker parts in the bucket with a bit of straw and hang it a couple of feet above your chickens. After a few days (during warm weather), the maggots will spill out onto the ground. The chickens will gather below the bucket, waiting for the protein packed morsels to fall from above.

Of course, I’m not actually suggesting that people should kill bankers and turn them into maggot food.

The stench would be overpowering. And that’s before the maggots could do their handy work.

Via: AP:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress Tuesday the government should pay more than “fire-sale” prices for the toxic assets it would acquire under a proposed $700 billion bailout plan. That could mean both higher initial costs for taxpayers and reduced returns when the assets are later resold.

Bernanke’s comment was the first indication of how he and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson are thinking about formulating the rescue plan’s medicine in a way that doesn’t kill the patients. Requiring banks and other financial institutions to sell troubled loans and other assets anywhere close to recent sales prices of only a few cents on the dollar could wipe out the net worth of many and lead to a new wave of bank failures.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

The Fed chairman said he favors buying the assets based on their “hold-to-maturity” value, which would require an estimate to be made of what each security will eventually be worth as payments come in over the years.

“If the Treasury bids for and then buys assets at a price close to the hold-to-maturity price, there will be substantial benefits,” Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee. “First, banks will have a basis for valuing those assets and will not have to use fire-sale prices. Their capital will not be unreasonably marked down.”

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