Hunter On The Swedish Plan

Hunter on the Daily Kos has an excellent post:

"The central premise is that if a business needs government assistance, that assistance will indeed be given -- but the government will gain some proportionally appropriate investment in the company in question. The taxpayers will front the money for rescuing companies that are too big to fail, but too incompetent to succeed, and will coax them back to health, and will reap whatever rewards are to be reaped. Once healthy, the government sells its stake and the company returns to ownership entirely by the private sector.

There are a dozen ways to do it: the Issac plan, the "Swedish" plan, whatever you want to call it. But the premise is the same, and removes much of the "moral hazard" involved in creating a Paulson-backed marketplace for the currently unmarketable. It has been proven to work. It provides a potential upside for taxpayers. It provides an avenue for deep public shame -- and possible terminations -- of the people who managed to steer their companies into insolvencies."

Read the whole thing, but I agree with what he says.