Does Anyone Know How To Fix This Financial Crisis?

I read a couple interesting articles this morning that I thought I’d share. One article talks about how no one, including President-elect Obama, knows how to fix the financial crisis. The other offers a potential solution that will cost more than $1 trillion. I’ll summarize the two articles below:

The first article was written by Russell Roberts, economics professor at George Mason University, and published in Forbes. In his article, Roberts equates this financial crisis to raising children, saying that each one is different and there is no official manual on how to raise the perfect child. He goes through the measures that have already been enacted, saying how each one thus far has failed miserably. Many people have this belief that Obama will miraculously save the day, but Roberts points out that the only solution Obama has really posed thus far is to offer another stimulus package, and idea that has already been tried and failed. Paulson is lost at this point, and he doubts Obama will be the answer either. He ends his article saying:

“What if doing whatever it takes means doing less, rather than more?

That is the conundrum for Obama and the successor to Paulson. The more options there are, the harder it is to know which one is the right one. The more options you try, the more uncertainty is injected into the economy, and the more cautious are investors and employers and consumers.

Nobody knows what it takes to move the economy forward right now.”

The second article was written by Neha Singh and published by Reuters. This article is about the findings of Paul Miller, an analyst for Friedman Billings Ramsey. Miller has come up with a plan to save the U.S. financial system, and it will cost only $1 trillion to $1.2 trillion in additional capital. Basically, he says that in order to restore confidence and improve liquidity in the credit market, this injection needs to happen. In addition, rather than the investments being made via preferred shares or long term debt mechanisms, Miller thinks that in order for the plan to work the investments need to be common equity injections. The following is a quote from Miller: “Debt or TARP capital is not true capital. Long-term debt financing is not the solution. Only injections of true tangible common equity will solve the current crisis.” Miller says that even his plan will take a few years to fix things.

Obviously these two articles have very different views, but one thing they have in common is that they agree that the solutions proposed or enacted thus far have failed.

Of the two views, I tend to side with Roberts, author of the first article. I think that pretty much we are lost in the forest and going around in circles trying to get out, and as they teach you in Boy Scouts, when you get lost sometimes it is best to wait it out.

Miller’s suggestion, on the other hand, I find completely ludicrous. So instead of the government (i.e., taxpayers) getting preferred treatment for their extremely risky investments into struggling companies, they should settle for common equity investments that would surely lose a ton of taxpayer money? Sorry, but that sounds pretty dumb to me. And I’m certainly not willing to lose $1 to $1.2 trillion of taxpayer money to find out that this crazy idea isn’t going to work. There are a lot of ways that we can help the economy with that kind of money that would have a bigger impact. Besides, there is no way that plan would ever get approved without people rioting in the streets and threatening rebellion. People are already outraged at the current investments we are making into these companies, and if we were to take even lesser terms in exchange, look out. The only people who would support this plan would be shareholders in these institutions, and I don’t think anyone feels bad for them at this point.