【燕王若干按】：

1，本王近来花天酒地，坚信“花掉的钱，才是钱”。
2，上面的话，算是新年祝福之一！懂得本王祝福的意思，你就不会亏。

3，花天酒地之余，关心一哈米国国情，转帖一篇忧国忧民的炸药奖blog（见下面）。

4，O8ama生不逢时。费老大劲，当选P. 一般总统能有100天蜜月。
5，O8ama也就10天蜜月:“人民保底，还是人民NOT保底？that is the question”
6，借一句老话：命苦不能怨政府 - 何况O8ama就是政府！

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正文（附本王点评）：


The Geithner put

P. Krugman

People tend to forget this, but we were on the edge of a major banking crisis in the early 90s. it wasn’t just the S&Ls; commercial banks were in trouble too, largely because of big losses on commercial real estate. And I remember a conversation I had back then with economists at the New York Fed, one of whom declared that the only reason Citibank (as it then was) had a positive market value was the “FDIC put.” That is, part of the Citi’s downside was in fact covered by taxpayers, who were guaranteeing deposits whatever happened, while all of the upside belonged to the stockholders.

【命苦不能怨政府，政府更苦】

As it turned out, a combination of low interest rates and then the great Clinton-era boom meant that this put option was never exercised. But that episode came back to me as I parse stories about the Obama administration’s apparent emerging plan for bank rescue.

【好玄，人民几乎买单】

If the reports are right, the plan is to buy up some of the troubled assets — but only those that have already been written way down. The Obama team doesn’t want to buy up the assets that haven’t been written down. For the rest, the Feds will offer a guarantee protecting the banks against large losses.

【人民又要买单】

As best I understand it, the reason not to buy up assets that haven’t been written down is that paying book value would be an obviously bad deal for taxpayers, while paying a low price would devastate banks’ reported capital, a process sometimes known as “recognizing reality.” So the really important part of the bailout will involve providing what we have to call the “Geithner put”: taxpayers will assume a large part of the downside risk.

【一回生，二回熟，政府买单买出经验来】

This might — might — work out OK, just as the FDIC put of the early 90s did. But let’s be clear what this is: it is lemon socialism, pure and simple: socialized losses, privatized profits.

【只有社会主义能够救美国。柠檬社会主义嘛，难说了】

Is this really the best we can do?

【你问俺，俺问谁？】


不过，俺虽然没有得炸药奖，也说一句：

现在还没有动根本。啥是根本？国家，社会的根本是契约。到哪天说话不算话了，
就动了根本了。丑陋的就都出来了。但愿不至于此。

此为新年祝愿之二！

出于对诸位XDJM的酷爱，及本王花天酒地后的内疚，多说一句。

新年祝愿之二，也只是祝愿。祝愿如果不成功，相信你们也早作好了准备。

此为新年祝愿之三。

- 燕王