Wall Street helped produce the global financial and economic crisis. Now, as the Obama administration prepares to unveil a revised bailout plan for the banking system, policy makers hope Wall Street can be part of the solution.
Administration officials said the plan, to be announced Tuesday, was likely to depend in part on the willingness of private investors other than banks like hedge funds, private equity funds and perhaps even insurance companies to buy the contaminating assets that wiped out the capital of many banks.
The officials say they are counting on the profit motive to create a market for those assets. The government would guarantee a floor value, officials say, as a way to overcome investors’ reluctance to buy them.
Details of the new plan, which were still being worked out during the weekend, are sketchy. And they are likely to remain so even after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announces the plan on Tuesday. But the aim is to reduce the need for immediate U.S. government financing and relieve fears that taxpayers will pay excessive prices if the government takes over risky securities. The banks created those securities when credit and home prices were booming a few years ago.
Besides devising a way to bring private investors into the bank bailout, the Treasury plan is expected to inject more capital into some banks and to give many homeowners relief from immediate foreclosures.