Toxic assets clearinghouse

Michael Balter 3/23/2009 10:02:00 AM Politics
This is great, the federal government is going to offload all those toxic assets we keep reading about. I'm figuring, since they are worth so little, the feds will offer little people like you and me top dollar to take them off their hands, kind of like volunteering for medical experiments or donating blood or allowing nuclear wastes in our neighborhood. This has got to be a great way to make some extra money for those of us who have been hit hard by the financial crisis, and...

Sorry, what's that you say? Oh. Never mind!
Michael Balter

Posted by Michael Balter

I have been a working journalist for more than 40 years, beginning in Los Angeles as an investigative reporter and then in Paris as a travel, food, and science writer. For more than 20 years I have covered anthropology and archaeology writer for Science, Audubon, Scientific American, SAPIENS, and other publications. I have also covered sexual misconduct for The Verge, Scientific American, and others; I write about mental health, especially schizophrenia; and I engage in occasional media criticism. I returned to the USA in October 2017 after 30 years in Paris, and now live in the New York City area, where I currently teach journalism at City College of New York (I previously taught journalism at Boston University and New York University.) For more about me and what I do, copies of my articles, information about my book, and other goodies, please visit MY WEB SITE

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3 Comments

Richard Parker said…
So the new move is to auction off those useless 'assets' at 9500% leverage?

Wonderful idea - just who are those 'private investor partners' supposed to be?

If America could get rid of the ideas that 'Capitalism is Wonderful' and 'Socialism is Awful'

- then the government could just take those 'too big to fail' financial institutions over, break them up into small, manageable bits, sell them at a profit, and get them back into the business they were supposed to be in - take deposits and loan out that money.

Timothy G should be sacked before he and Bernanke give any more money to Goldman Sacks (sorry - Sachs)

- and the US government should just CANCEL all those 'toxic' CDSs, CDOs, credit swaps, and all the other phoney financial bets that sit out there in the twilight, poisoning the world's economies.
March 24, 2009 at 10:48 AM
Richard Parker said…
A good artcile on this is by Matt Taibbi at;
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/print

Have a stiff drink to hand while you're reading it.
March 24, 2009 at 8:26 PM
Michael Balter said…
Thanks for the link, Richard, another friend had turned me on to that article but had not read it yet. Will have that drink: Mine is Calvados.
March 25, 2009 at 10:12 AM
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