GEITHNER BEATDOWN - Germany Slams 'STUPID' U.S. Plan To Boost EU Bailout Fund
Geithner's plan rejected by Germany with a bitchslap thrown in for good measure.
The plan, cooked up by U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, is to persuade European leaders to vastly expand the size of the emergency bailout fund known as the EFSF, or European Financial Stability Facility. His proposal, and I’m not making this up, would use leverage -- i.e., borrowing -- to increase the size of the already borrowed money in the fund by up to 10x.
This is a little hard to believe, but it’s the truth. The funds from euro-zone countries in the EFSF have already been borrowed. And now the plan espoused by Geithner is to use that money as collateral to borrow as much as ten times more.