As I've argued before, there basically are five parties who might be asked to absorb the losses on existing assets, namely, stockholders, creditors, managers, employees, and the taxpayers. My favored concept is, we use player 5 to get as much leverage as possible out of the first 4. It appears that the Treasury's concept is instead a continuation of Plan A, namely, hope that if we hold on tight and keep the ship from sinking long enough, everything will turn out OK.
[....]
[...] The Treasury is acting as though there's a sixth party who can step into the funding gap here in the form of the Federal Reserve. Once again, that will be OK if Plan A works out, that is, if things go well enough that the Fed's losses on any assets acquired and loans extended are limited to the TARP funds already authorized. But if not, we're back to the same calculation-- the Treasury must borrow (if foreigners remain willing) and taxpayers must ultimately pay the bill. Either that, or the Fed just covers the bill by printing money for the whole thing.
There's a very real danger in going as far down the road of Fed-Treasury cooperation as we already have. The Administration starts to think of the Federal Reserve as another cookie jar it can draw on to cover all these pesky bills which, if Plan A fails, we'll find are impossible to pay by any means other than monetization and a huge inflation.
And fear of that, if it catches fire, would be a far more destabilizing event than a controlled receivership for a few more big financial institutions.
<http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2009/02/the_treasurys_f.html>