[Azure]

Article about the 'toxic assets' the Feds want to buy.

Geithner announced a plan Monday that would use $75 billion to $100 billion in taxpayer dollars from the initial Wall Street bailout, plus money from private investors, to generate $500 billion to buy up the assets from troubled banks. That amount could increase to $1 trillion over time. Those are mainly mortgage-backed securities whose value has cratered, but they remain on bank balance sheets and are blocking further lending.

The administration is facing resistance from the potential buyers and sellers in the new program, as well as criticism from the left that the proposal is a rehash of old Bush Administration ideas. Geithner deflected criticism that his proposal didn't go far enough. "We are the United States of America. We are not Sweden. We have a very complicated financial system," he said.

A lot was riding on Geithner’s announcement – both the fiscal health of the nation’s crippled banking system, but also Geithner’s own reputation. He’s been battered by a series of missteps that have left some Republicans calling for his resignation, even as President Barack Obama is standing solidly behind him.

Obama gave Geithner a vote of confidence again in remarks Monday, praising the new bailout plan as “one more critical element in our recovery. But we've still got a long way to go, and we've got a lot of work to do. But I'm very confident that, with the team that we've got assembled, we're going to be able to make it happen.”

Geithner’s plan won an early and important endorsement from The Financial Services Roundtable, a trade group for the nation’s largest financial institutions. The group said the plan will help fix a value on the damaged securities, give flexibility to potential buyers and provide enough government-backed financing to make the plan work.

“Combined with other on-going efforts, the plan will help strengthen the economy,” the Roundtable said in a statement immediately after Geithner’s announcement.

Wall Street also signaled it support, with the Dow up nearly 300 points as of 11 a.m. Monday.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20361.html

Interesting that whoever wrote the article still thinks the Dow Jones is a good indicator of how the economy is doing.