UPDATE: An afterthought of finding more versions of this story as I continued reading tonight is that a better title for this post might have been “Will the US have a pot to pee in if Paulson keeps spending on his friends?” (see the updated news below)
I picked the story up over at All finance and couldn’t wait wait to get it up – not to mention it makes me sick to think about Paulson using some of the taxpayers money to bailout the insurance industry’s bad investments.
The U.S. Treasury Department is studying how it could give relief to insurance companies under a $700 billion financial services rescue package, two sources familiar with the deliberations said on Friday.
Last week, the Treasury tried to squash rumors the government was preparing to give bond and mortgage insurance companies a capital injection. But senior officials are considering how the Treasury might be able to aid state-regulated insurance companies, the sources said.
The Treasury so far has used capital powers to aid only federally regulated institutions. But the program, known as TARP, could be used to buy sour assets from other financial companies and help them scrub their balance sheets.
It takes a sick mind to come up with TARP as the name of a program to bailout the insurance industry – CRAP would be my suggestion. Continue reading “News that couldn’t wait – Paulson considering bailout of insurance companies UPDATED Will US have a pot to pee in if Paulson keeps spending on his friends?”