An Extensive, Powerful, Transformative--Hoarding
Treasury Chief Says Banks Must Deploy New Capital
By MARK LANDLER
WASHINGTON — Describing the government’s financial bailout plan as “extensive, powerful and transformative,” Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said on Tuesday that the injection of $250 billion into the nation’s banks was needed to restore confidence and avoid a collapse of the financial system.
Speaking shortly after President Bush used similar terms to describe the proposal, Mr. Paulson said the Treasury would make $250 billion available to banks to help recapitalize those banks and to get them lending again, among themselves and to businesses and consumers. . . . “The needs of our economy require that our financial institutions not take this new capital to hoard it, but to deploy it,”
_____________________________________________________________ How quickly has restore confidence and avoid a collapse of the financial system become a cliche? A week? A month? One loses track. Frightened as they remain, recipient banks will (of course) hoard it.