Just Do It Already

Reading through analyses of the Geithner non-plan, it strikes me that it's all a way of avoiding the real problem. My reader puts it bluntly enough:

Just fucking do it already. Pick a price, buy up the toxic crap clogging up their balance sheets and let the chips fall where they may. If a few banks and their common shareholders get screwed, so be it. If instead, the taxpayers end up getting screwed by paying too much, too damn bad. It's not like we aren't used to it.    

But no, Geithner doesn't want to crush his old pals and they want to pretend that taxpayers' interests are front and center. So, we get nothing of value and the pain just lingers on.     Here's the thing. All this debt we've incurred and are incurring is gonna end up being inflated down to size eventually anyway. It's the only way out and it's the path that will end up being taken. So what the hell is another trillion on top of what's already been piled up? Far, far better to rip the bandaid off asap, let the system adjust and shorten the path to renewed growth of some degree. As it is, the fiddling around they're doing now is gonna drag this thing out much longer than it needs to be.

Maybe Geithner was spooked by the Lehman collapse. But this was not decisive enough, or clear enough.