I like the Geithner plan and I am optimistic that it will work. Reading it made me think of Winston Churchill who had said that Americans will eventually do the right thing- having previously exhausted all other possibilities.

I like the plan because it provides a solid basis for a successful campaign. Its target is the real problem: by the time the Banks realized that they had a lot of bad assets, all private investors were too nervous to buy them. Furthermore, its implementation depends on leadership teams and organizations that exist in America. They are not angels, but rather funds and fund managers given incentives to solve the problem they created. Yes, it is like asking the snake to eat its own tail.

There will be many that will argue that the incentives to the investors make the plan unfair to the tax payer, that there is nothing really innovative about it and it does not address the needs of the neediest. All these objections are valid. However, they attribute to the plan a purpose that it does not have. The sole Purpose of the plan is to make the financial system work. Its legitimacy, therefore, will depend solely on its success. If it succeeds in producing movement in the market, then movement will make for order.

History is what allows me to be optimistic that the plan will work. The plan is very similar to the one that worked 15 years ago with the Savings and Loans crisis. The outcome of that crisis was not ideal, but the campaign worked and the heroic Purpose of cleaning the stables was achieved. This afforded us higher aspirations, but only later.

The financial crisis we have been living with is like a massive traffic accident that has caused several casualties and is keeping the rest of us in a jam. It has been caused by a number of reckless drivers exhibiting the worst in human nature and drunk by cheap credit. The fact that the traffic lights had not been working and no police were deployed in time did not help. Until today, only the most serious of the casualties have been removed but the rest of us are still immobilized, unable to go to work. Geithner`s plan is good for removing the damaged vehicles so the rest can move again. It does not provide for the prosecution of the guilty, the expenses for treating the injured or a new system of traffic lights. But for the first time in six months we can see movement as a clear possibility.