The Well-Edited Newspaper Article

[koganbot]

Here - in full, including editing attribution - is an article posted several minutes ago by Reuters:

Paulson Considering Bank Injections: White House
By REUTERS
Published: October 9, 2008
Filed at 12:00 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is "actively considering" capital injections into troubled U.S. banks, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said on Thursday.

"These capital injections are something that Secretary Paulson is actively considering," Perino said at a press conference.

(Editing by James Dalgleish)

Comments

[koganbot]

By the way, the content of the article (if the article had bothered to elaborate) is extraordinary. Paulson feels that the bailout bill gives him the authority to buy stock in banks, which means he's considering the same sort of temporary partial nationalization scheme that Gordon Brown just implemented in Britain; this means he's veering towards the Swedish solution. I think participation by the banks would be voluntary, however.

(I'll bet most Repubs who ended up voting yes had no idea they were authorizing Paulson to do this.)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

wasn't it fairly clear he was getting authorisation to do anything he chose? i read half a dozen snarky blogposts saying "what's to stop paulson moving unmarked millions into his own secret swiss bank and vanishing into an undersea lair?"

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

(that's my version of what they were saying, but those kinds of jokes)

[koganbot]

He was getting permission to buy stuff and to demand equity in return for what he bought, but I didn't know it went as far as getting permission to directly buy stock (rather than getting stock in exchange for the difference in what they paid for troubled assets and the worth of the assets). And the Goldman Sachs writeup said that the intent of congress wasn't to allow the buy-ups to be a backdoor to capitalizing the countries. Whereas this seems to be straightup capitalization by the front door - and actual partial temporary nationalization on the Swedish model.

And this wasn't part of Paulson's original proposal, so if this is what Paulson is deciding now needs to be done, and it works, Senator Dodd will have been the one to save his ass.

[koganbot]

capitalizing the countries

Ha! Meant to type "capitalizing the companies." Or, if you're Russia, capitalizing Iceland, which indeed is a country. (And in the U.S. the feds are being asked by some state gov'ts - e.g. California - to capitalize them! Maybe if the gov't refuses, Russia will step in and send money to California - except I doubt that Russia has that much to give.)