Tuesday, March 24, 2009

American Fobaproa

El Universal referred to the Obama bank rescue plan as the American Fobaproa, the first media source I've seen to do so. The article says that two elements of the Obama bank rescue --stricter controls on bank executives as well as promises to punish guilty parties-- will likely make it less controversial than in the States.

Based on what some experts are saying, Obama should be so lucky as to have his plan work as well as Fobaproa. Ernesto Zedillo pointed out in January that Fobaproa, at 20 percent of the Mexican GDB in 1995, was far more costly than the American rescue packages attempted up to that point. With the 1.55 trillion of new cash from TARP and this plan, the US is still barely spending half that amount to resurrect its banks.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We've been discussing the whole rigamarole as Mexico v Sweden for some time now.

I should post on this. The big thing with Fobaproa was that it didn't wipe out the shareholders.

pc said...

Please do post. Were you in Mexico City in the mid-1990s? I've read about how vital his raging against Fobaproa was to AMLO's building a network of supporters, and it makes you wonder if some enterprising populist would try to pull the same trick off in the States. I think that Americans are less inclined to go for populism and class warfare than certain segments of Mexico, but I dont know, after seeing the whole AIG thing last week, you could envision the bank rescue injecting American politics with a pretty significant AMLO streak.