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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JBTFD who wrote (140882)	10/11/2008 4:33:51 PM
From: geode00	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

"...Like bankruptcy trustees, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson should focus on keeping the system operating while it's under government protection. It's not that there's no cash in the system: Trillions of dollars are parked in money-market funds, T-bills and other "safe investments." The problem for our bankruptcy trustees is putting that money to work. For the global economy, the same metaphor should apply. The bankruptcy trustees in this case will be the global finance ministers and central bankers who are gathering in Washington this weekend for their annual meeting. Hopefully they understand that they must hang together now, or they will all hang separately. Sadly, the institution that was supposed to protect the global system, the International Monetary Fund -- while issuing some timely warnings about risks to stability -- has been utterly impotent in the crisis. It's time to abolish this bootless institution and create a new one that can help manage the global workout. What we need now is a Global Clearinghouse, a public-private consortium of the biggest financial institutions and central banks, that can ensure that trades get completed and losses are covered while the system works its way out of bankruptcy. David Smick, whose fine book "The World Is Curved" offered clairvoyant early warnings of disaster, proposes that private financial institutions might finance 60 percent of the cost of this clearinghouse and central banks the remaining 40 percent. To play and get protection, private institutions would have to share all data, which means coming clean about the toxic paper on their books. What matters is the collective commitment to create a global backstop -- so that there is a foundation for lending and commerce, all the way down the line. "What's happening is the reappraisal of the value of every asset in the world," says Smick. "The solution has got to be global." This global catastrophe increasingly does resemble a bankruptcy. But take heart in the fact that bankruptcy is an everyday fact of life and that under sensible management it's a process of stewardship rather than a death sentence. We know how to do this job -- how to use public trustees to protect private companies and their workers when markets fail. washingtonpost.com ===== At this point, what else are these people, supposedly world leaders, going to do?