There is No Plan B?

Comes now my man rembom with troubling questions about the "bailout" just now rushed through Congress by the Bush administration for the exclusive benefit of wealthy, incompetent, and quite possibly criminally fraudulent bankers...,

"Well, it looks like the Fed has discovered a Plan B. It turns out that the Fed can buy commercial paper directly from non-financial corporations needing credit to maintain operations. This will keep the credit markets working even if the zombie banks aren't up to the task. In other words, the threat of a complete meltdown in the absence of a bailout was nonsense and the media once again got taken for a ride by the Bush administration."Of course, relying on the central bank to dish out credit to corporations is not ideal, but neither is it ideal to overpay for $700 billion of junk assets on the books of troubled banks.

Too bad that the media didn't spend more time focusing on the options available, instead of selling President Bush's bailout package."

From Beat The Press blog, Oct. 7, 2008, by Dean Baker