Another $800 billion to buy mortgages

[Lingyis]

Soleron said:

FishyJoe said:
The problem I have with these interventions is that everything seems to be covered in a cloud. I'm not exactly sure where the money is going. I have no idea if billions are being fleeced out of the system or not. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of transparency or regulation and for all I know Paulson is handing out checks to his buddies.

Yes. "Injected into the economy" could mean anything. Even leaving it in huge piles on street corners counts as injection. At the other end of the scale, no money could be changing hands at all and the $800b could be an accounting trick with adjusting the future, potential value of bits of paper. We also don't know where the money is cominng from, whether it is in bonds, conditional pledges to buy stuff the the future, actual printed money, etc., etc.

 

dunno exactly what this 800 bln is coming from, but looks like it's just the fed's money-printing mechanism, i.e. not bond proceeds.  i think, the hope is that, this is not money that is permanently printed, but that the assets exchanged for the money will be eventually sellable.  this is, again, the "unclogging" argument that we have heard many times now.

printing money is obviously inflationary, but some people would argue now is actually a good time to print money.

with regards to money going to the banks, well, you do know exactly which banks or institutions are getting capital injections.  what you don't know if just how the money is being spent--but it's an ill-defined question because the money just becomes a bank's capital base.