paulson

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's $1 trillion plan to encourage private companies to snap up toxic assets that are weighing-down the balance sheets of banks was greeted warmly by Wall Street, even as some economists raised questions about its effectiveness. Investors who earlier complained...

Back when the current disaster was getting started, our 74th Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson had the idea of buying toxic waste from banks. This was his plan to save the world from financial Armageddon and he got Congress to allocate what then sounded like quite a bit of money -- $750 billion --...

It's almost impossible to get your head around the numbers: $700 billion for "troubled Assets;" $25 billion for the auto industry. $300-some billion to bail out Citigroup.With this last promise, the United States Government has now pledged $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers to try and...

A few months ago, I got into an argument with a couple of my fellow Walletpop writers. I found myself standing out in favor of a federal fund to help distressed homeowners refinance their mortgages, and my colleagues were arguing (with some justification) that it was unfair to make them foot the...