Paulson’s Skin in Paulson’s game

Henry Paulson promises that he will spend the 700,000,000,000 of our dollars over which he wants total control wisely. I say he be required to put his money where his mouth is. Ask him how much he expects them to be worth after he has spent them on mortgage backed assets and tell him he pays 1/1,000 th of losses beyond that up to 10 million (he has them) and gets 1/1,000 th of all profits (that is if we end up with more than $ 700 billion he keeps one one thousandth of the difference.

He would get even paler if his money were on the line.

Also, I think if any firm sells stuff to the treasury, the officers of that firm should be required to put up 1% of the money and get 1% of the revenue generated by the assets their firm sold and 1% of proceeds from sale of those assets.

That way, if they are good stewards of their shareholders wealth, they will still dump their worst junk on the treasury (and pigs will fly). Otherwise they will try to unload at fair value (if they make a profit they get sued. If they make a loss for the treasury they hurt their pocket books).

over at dailykos you can vote on this proposal.