Paulson and Bernanke Botching the Sales Pitch
By Jim Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist
9/24/2008 4:46 PM EDT
Memo to Hank Paulson and everyone from the administration who is trying to get this plan passed, as well as Mr. Academic, Ben Bernanke: You are selling this plan all wrong.
Here's what this plan is about: Keeping people in their homes. It is not about "liquidity." Here's what the plan is about: having the loans to send your kids to college, not "a freezing up of the credit markets."
Here's what the plan is about: being able to buy a new car with a car loan. It is not about trying to free up commercial paper.
Here's what the plan is about: making it so when you go to your ATM, there is cash. It is not about making sure banks are made whole from their own mortgage mistakes. .
Here's what the plan is about: making it so you will not have to work two jobs to keep your house. It is not about the need to keep Libor down.
Here's what this plan is about: making sure unemployment does not skyrocket to 20% or 30%. It is not about freeing up capital for more overnight repos.
I listen to these tone-deaf proposers of the plan, and they are killing it. They are all about trying to explain how illiquid assets could be valued. They are not about trying to explain how if you ever want to have a shot of retiring ever again within your lifetime, you need to be with the plan.
Then the administration can make adjustments to get the buy-in, whatever it takes, stimulus, help on foreclosures, an executive compensation review board.
But without explaining this plan to the American people in English and not Wall Street, Goldman Sachs gibberish, without putting it in Main Street words, it is doomed.
And then it won't be the mortgage market that's in trouble, it will be the mortgaging of our kids and grandkids.
It's so obvious it is killing me.
I hope it is now obvious to you. |
