New playbook for Treasury

It’s been a wild and whacky weekend with the world’s major finance gurus in DC trying to put a plug on their stock markets’ decline. Since the first boulders of this financial crisis came raining down on the heads of Wall Street, the Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson has been frantically pushing Congress to give him money to inject into the financial system. He started by asking for $700 billion in order to get bad loans and mortgages “off the books” of major lending institutions. The problem, of course, was more complex than that. What Secretary Paulson and Federal Chairman Ben Bernanke wanted to do was create a market for “distressed assets” by buying them in mass. What the Secretary said he would not do, is the very thing he’s contemplating after this weekend’s G7 finance meetings in Washington. Read on for more…

Wanted: Contractors to help buy ‘distressed assets’

Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are reporting today that the Treasury’s bailout plan is pushing forward through Congress. The plan is not without its detractors, however. See the flip side for a quick rundown and some irresponsible predictions…