Commentaries
Now raising intellectual capital
Recycle the TARP
The U.S. insurance fund for bank deposits is running out of money. At the same time, some of the big institutions that received federal bailouts last fall have repaid more than $70 billion to the Treasury Department, and more checks to the government may be in the mail soon.
Right hand, meet left hand.
Indeed, one way of dealing with this looming crisis at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp would be to take all that repaid bailout money and simply inject it into the bank insurance fund. Such a move would instantly bolster the deposit insurance fund, which at the end of June had just $10.4 billion in the kitty.
Transferring the repaid bailout money to the insurance fund would permit bank regulators to move more aggressively in shutting down some of the 416 troubled lenders with $300 billion in assets on the agency’s watch list.
And the sooner the FDIC can dispose of the worst banks, the faster the nation’s financial system will be on the path to a real recovery.
-
The Wall
