Clueless in America meets desperate to do something

So, can you believe this?

In an effort to do something there is now a WHITE PAPER that describes the Treasury's new bank capitalization plan. Finally we are going to see some of the details that Treasury has been working on so hard behind the scenes.

And here it is: banks are going to EXAMINE THEMSELVES!

Really!
The Treasury 'white paper' says it all.

go to http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/reports/tg40_capwhitepaper.pdf

The White Paper clearly states that Treasury will impose a scenario on the banks that they must use to assess their performance under the criteria set forth by the treasury. But isn't this the sort of self-regulation that got us into this mess?

Indeed, credibility aside, how does this address the problem?

read on....

...let's think deeply on the issue of securities that banks have on their balance sheets now, that they cannot value. Isn't this a core problem that has been around since Hank and Ben testified that they wanted $700 bln in no oversight non recourse monies to get some auctions going to discover prices?

...soooo if banks can't evaluate securities under conditions of reality, how will they evaluate them under conditions of 'scenario'?

Knock knock?

whose there?

whose there?? Hey, whose there!

Just as I suspected- nobody home.

It's not a 'knock knock' joke- it's just a knock- no joke.

That's right no one could really be stupid enough to let banks self-test and to assume that they had any idea what their currently 'unmarkable' assets would do under any scenario could they?

What a bankrupt plan.

So what was the REAL idea? Was it to make us think they really did this? That by having banks assess themselves under conditions so bad (the treasury's scenario) that no one expects to occur and yet to survive, public morale would be boosted? To find that banks are still solvent without new capital under draconian conditions would throw off the yoke of pessimism? Everyone could then conclude that BANKS ARE SOLID! Everything is fine. No one needs any new capitalization. Problem solved.

Who though we were/are stupid enough to fall for that?

What a God-awful plan.

Thanks Tim for being, as always, clueless in Washington. Republicans did not corner the market on stupid ways to fix the economy.

Maybe David Letterman could have a new spot for Stupid Administration tricks you could propose this one for...