The Geithner Plan

Treasury Money Overlord Tim Geithner unveiled his plan to spend the remaining $350 billion of "Throw Money at Banks and Pray to All of the Gods" fund. The consensus? No one has any idea what the fuck is going on because the plan is so vague.

Krugman thinks it might be a Trojan horse to sneak in a good policy and analyzes it for what it isn't, Justin Fox notes Geithner has no big plan but praises him for the openness of it, Felix Salmon seems baffled that this is the best thing Geithner could come up with after 11 weeks, Robert Reich isn't sure what Geithner just did but knows what he still has to do, Kevin Drum professes the plan as "clear as mud" and then go on to explain all the ways the vagaries make things hard to understand, and the WSJ is mad because Geithner still won't liquidate the poor to oil the machines of capitalism and think the plan is kinda vague.

So to sum up: it's vague, might be good, probably not horrible but not willing to rule out horrible, and some of the best experts in academia, news media, and bloggery have no clear idea what is going to happen. Also, after he announced this plan, the stock market dropped 3%. We're in the 7000's! Feel good now? It's not like its your money, you don't even have a job.