A Little Exposition Music, Please

If you're just joining us, here's the plan for Team Obama:

1. The Bank Bailout Plan
2. The Stimulus Bill
3. The Foreclosure Relief Package

Obama is counting on a combination of all three to get us out of the mess. First, the bailout. This is the part I like the least, as the total cost of it seems to be around $2.5 trillion and nobody seems to be sure exactly what it does. We do have some broad details, like that the plan contains an effort to assess how strong the remaining banks are and determine what needs to be done to save each bank, if anything.

It's this part of the bank plan that actually may be the true thrust of the effort to save the banks. The theory is that banks found wanting will be dealt with harshly, while at the same time announcing which banks are healthy will assure the public. It's a possible road to Plan N, the nationalization of the banks. It's also the first real inkling we have that Obama and Geithner may be ready to make tough decisions about which banks stay and which are gone. My only real problem is that I don't think any of the banks are solvent at this point, certainly not Citi or Bank of America, and certainly not any of the regional banks like Regions Bank, SunTrust, or Fifth Third. A lot of banks are going to go away very soon regardless. Jury's still way out on this one.

Second is the stimulus bill. This one will most likely be on the President's desk on Monday, he'll sign it, and we'll get started. My major issue is that the spending part of the bill is far, far too small (especially after anti-stimulus tax cuts.) However, economists say there will be 3 to 4 million additional jobs created from this bill. That's good news, because we've already lost 3.6 million jobs since December 2007, and 2.6 million in just the last five months alone.

But that's assuming the pace of the job creation will be able to overcome the job losses period. We're up to the point of losing 600,000 jobs a month now, and the stimulus is expected to work over a period of two years. Granted, it'll help, but the reality is it'll be a while before this bill starts kicking in the jobs and slowing down the rate of losses. Will it be enough?

Finally, the foreclosure package. Details on this get announced Wednesday, but the gist is a standardized process to get homeowners payment relief and the chance to refinance to a rate both banks and homeowners can live with. There's pretty widespread support for this, mainly because the banks don't want to get stuck with foreclosed homes they can't sell that are falling in value any more than homeowners want to get kicked out on the streets. Foreclosures are lose-lose for everybody right now.

The good news is that even the GOP would be mega stupid to block this, which means they will, saying that all the people that will benefit are poor broke-ass minorities or something that will knock another 10% off their already sub 35% ratings. The bad news? This is something that needed to have been done a year ago. Now it's still critical, but it may again be too late.

We'll see what happens.