NO!

Pretty shocking.

I still don't know if I support this monstrosity.

The way I understand it is the main problem is that the Treasury is lending money to banks like crazy. Just throwing money out there.

But, the banks are just holding on to the cash and not loaning it out.

Couldn't there be an easier way to get the money flowing than this? Something that directly addresses that fundamental problem, instead of doing this end-run?

Furthermore, anything which allows either the people who got or the people who gave the bad loans to get out of trouble free--at the expense of more prudential people, who didn't get in over their head--is a long-term awful thing.

Capitalism depends on profits and losses--if you remove the losses, you get more risk, more stupidity, and more trouble down the line.

Perhaps we would be better off with a short-term recession than we would with this long-term precedent.