A Glimpse of Hope?

Has the Bush Administration finally got it right?

After the worst week in Wall Street history, there is a major shift away from buying toxic investments off banks' balance sheets and towards injecting capital directly into the anemic financial system.

If the Treasury follows European leads, it will begin injecting capital Monday. There are several ways this can work and it is likely all will be used eventually:

• The Treasury can guarantee loans between banks. This should jump start the frozen credit market, which must begin working again or we'll go over the edge.
• Lending the banks money to provide the capital to help the credit markets.
• Buying stock in banks, which injects capital the banks don't have to repay. If the plan works, and banks become profitable again, the taxpayer could profit.

The Europeans are aggressively moving in this direction and the U.S. should get on-board Monday.