Senate Stimulus, Geithner’s Banking Plan and a Florida Insurance Bailout
The Senate passes an $838 billion economic stimulus package.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announces a new plan to revitalize troubled U.S. banks.
Florida officials look to Congress to prop up the state’s financially unstable insurance program.
More headlines: listen to the LibertyWeek podcast.
1. CONGRESS
The Senate passes an $838 billion economic stimulus package.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Iain Murray on why the legislation is reckless and wasteful.
“Taken together with the $1 trillion second round of the bank bailout, the Senate has decided to increase our already disastrous national debt of $10 trillion by a further twenty percent. It is ludicrous to think that the solution to a debt crisis is further borrowing. This pork package has been sold to the public as one that will get unemployed Americans back to work by funding public works projects. In fact, only 7% of the Senate package is about infrastructure. The rest is merely pay-offs and rewards to special interest groups. The public has been sold a pig in a poke.”
2. ECONOMY
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announces a new plan to revitalize troubled U.S. banks.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs Director John Berlau on one important thing the plan left out:
“Despite my hopes that Treasury Secretary Geithner’s plan would offer a change to mark-to-market rules we can believe in, as rumored in the financial press last week, the plan turns out to be ‘more of the same’ Bush-Paulson big spending and big government bailout. As knowledgeable observers from conservative Steve Forbes to Democrat stimulus proponent Mark Zandi agree, mark-to-market relief is essential to unclogging the arteries of the credit system. As I wrote in the Wall Street Journal last fall, it is one of the major reasons for the credit contagion despite the fact that mortgage delinquency rate are still only 6 percent.”
3. INSURANCE
Florida officials look to Congress to prop up the state’s financially unstable catastrophe insurance program.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Eli Lehrer on the wisdom of a state insurance bailout:
“This is a really, really bad idea. We’ve already done far too many bailouts of private companies. State governments – particularly ones that make bad decisions – don’t need bailouts as well. Congress should say ‘No’ to Kevin McCarty.”
Listen to LibertyWeek, the CEI weekly podcast, here.