It might be time to bail out the bailouts. That’s what New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Jan. 22.
Co-host Diane Sawyer asked Sorkin about the inauguration day stock market plunge and then its Jan. 21 bounce. Sorkin told Sawyer that on inauguration day, investors were responding “to the realization that the banks actually may be bankrupt. I hate to be the bear on this, but I think there’s a new realization that has come back to haunt us, which is that we really have to fix this system all over again.”
Sorkin said he’d been “working the phones,” and had talked to a dozen corporate executives, including bank executives, to ask what they thought it would take to mend the credit system. “I think what we’re talking about is, to fix this problem, we’re going to have to inject something on the order of another trillion dollars – maybe $1.5 trillion” above and beyond the money already proposed in the stimulus plan.
According to Sorkin, the stimulus plan doesn’t directly address the banks and the situation is desperate. “[I] don’t think people appreciate how desperate we are all over again,” he said. “We are in my estimation – and I think if you talk to these CEOs, in their estimation – we’re back in September.”