Jeffrey Sachs trashes the Geithner-Summers plan

Economist Jeffrey Sachs has trashed the Geithner-Summers plan.

Two weeks ago, I posted an article showing how the Geithner-Summers banking plan could potentially and unnecessarily transfer hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth from taxpayers to banks. The same basic arithmetic was later described by Joseph Stiglitz in the New York Times (April 1) and by Peyton Young in the Financial Times (April 1). In fact, the situation is even potentially more disastrous than we wrote. Insiders can easily game the system created by Geithner and Summers to cost up to a trillion dollars or more to the taxpayers.

Credible experts from every direction are trashing the Geithner-Summers plan. And for good reason. The "plan" is opaque and its foundation consists of "hide the ball," "trust us" and too much "business as usual" by too many too big corporations whose main function is to game the system, rather than creating necessary goods and services to Americans. Barack Obama has been getting terrible advice from his economic team, I believe. It's time to switch teams. More to come . . .

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