The Financial Crisis
In the past few weeks, the two giant GSEs (Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae) have been nationalized. Of the five biggest Investment Banks in the US (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns), three have ceased to exist. Congress has been stunned into inactivity as Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader admits the Congress has done nothing because nobody knows what to do. The "doing something" part is in the court of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on bailouts, billions "injected" into the global financial system. Financial institutions have been nationalized. Insurance companies have been taken over. Now there is talk of a "permanent solution" to the credit problems through setting up of a Government Institution to act to buy up bad mortgages from financial institutions so that they can clean up their balance sheets and survive. It is expected th...