I’ve thought about this a lot, watching this slow motion train wreck in Washington and Wall Street.
Personally, I think maybe it ought to just be allowed to play out. I mean who’s actually losing piles of money here? Rich people who made greedy bets on too-good-to-be-true mortgaged back securities, and then tried to hedge their position by buying uncollateralized insurance policies. That’s a lot like saying, “I want to go to Vegas and play craps all night with $1000 chips. If I win I keep it all. And if I lose, the house should give me back my stake”.
Still, with the banks spooked and market money moving to gold, Ma & Pa Kettle probably are going to feel the heat if they need a new tractor or cow, or plasma TV. And after watching the market drop 8% in a day I am convinced that something must be done. Perhaps $700B isn’t such a bad random number if they could do the right things with it.
So here’s my idea:
1) There are 17,000 large businesses in America and about 24 Million small firms. Most of those small firms are sole proprietorships. Only about 5 million small companies have employees. So, put up $200B for the SBA to provide loans and lines of credit to all the small businesses with employees who are said to be at risk here. This will provide immediate and direct liquidity to Main Street—about $40,000 for every small business—and push banks to stop whining and get back into their core business of lending. The SBA should offer the money to any credit worthy business at a reasonable rate—say 9%. If banks don’t like the competition, I bet they’ll decide to loosen up their credit and drop their rates to 7.5 or 8% to take the business back. Good!
2) Put up $150B for new highway, bridge and dam projects– $3B for each state in the union. This will be massive infusion for our aging infrastructure. It will create tons of new-deal jobs and sell caterpillar equipment and big trucks. And it will help the beleaguered construction industry hang in until this huge oversupply of homes is sold.
3) Put up $150B as prize and grant money that can be won by new companies that have good ideas in renewable energy, recycling and alternative transportation. This will not only help the ecology, it will help America become the thought and technology leader in the next great global technology race. It will create American jobs and give us an economic bargaining chip in the world again.
4) Finally, put up $200B to help banks out of the most toxic of the assets, and to shore up the financial community while these other initiatives get underway. Insist on warrants in these companies, convertible by the Treasury if they are able to get back on their feet again. Assign any profits from the program to shore up Social Security and Medicare. And only invest in the banks that are generally healthy and have a chance to be saved. The others SHOULD die. That’s capitalism.
What do you think?
This is my surprised look.