The Obama administration program to address the fragility of the banking system is based on a two major initiatives. First, it has proposed the Geithner- Summers Plan to buy subprime securitized assets from the banks. The toxic assets plan deals with less that 40 percent of the balance sheet of the banks that is in marketable securities. It does not deal with the 60 percent of the balance sheets of US banks that are loans and are not marked to market. Further, it will take six months to get the program in motion. The plan elicited deserved criticism from reputable analysts, including Paul Krugman in his NYT column. As Krugman points out in his column this plan is the third variant of an old plan to lift the value of toxic assets. The plan meets Einstein's definition of madness: continuing to do the same thing, hoping for a different outcome. Jeff Sachs (FT, March 23), Joseph Stiglitz (NYT, April 1) and Peyton Young (FT, April 1) added their concerns that the plan nationalizes losses and privatizes profits.
奥巴马(Obama)政府治理银行体系脆弱性的计划是以两项重要举措为基础的。首先，它提出了从银行收购次贷证券化资产的“盖特纳-萨默斯计划”(Geithner- Summers Plan)。这项不良资产计划所涉及的是占银行资产负债表的不到40%的有价证券；它并不涉及占美国银行资产负债表60%的不按市值计价的贷款。此外，它需要6个月的时间才可启动。该计划理所当然的招来了保罗•克鲁格曼(Paul Krugman)等知名分析人士的批评。正如克鲁格曼在其《纽约时报》(NYT)专栏文章中所指出的，该计划是一项提升不良资产价值的旧有计划的第三种变体。该计划符合爱因斯坦(Einstein)对“疯狂”的定义：持续做同样的事情，并期望出现不同的结果。对这项把损失国有化、把利润私有化的计划，杰夫•萨克斯(Jeff Sachs)（见英国《金融时报》3月23日文章）、约瑟夫•斯蒂格利茨(Joseph Stiglitz)（见《纽约时报》4月1日文章）和佩顿•杨(Peyton Young)（见英国《金融时报》4月1日文章）也表示了关切。