Fake Auctions Are Good Enough For Fake Assets....

So why not real auctions for real assets? Bloomberg details Geithner's latest giveaway to the banks:

Banks negotiating to reclaim stock warrants they granted in return for Troubled Asset Relief Program money may shortchange taxpayers by almost $10 billion if Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s first sale sets the pace, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

And a proposes solution:

Lenders shouldn’t be trusted to make suppositions that would be to the advantage of taxpayers, said Linus Wilson, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.... Wilson said the government would serve taxpayers better by auctioning off the securities to investors. The law that established TARP allows for an auction.

I love the complaints of the banks....

The Easton, Maryland-based bank’s warrants were valued yesterday at $12.33, or $2.1 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and modeled by Black-Scholes. Paying that to reclaim them would amount to an annual interest rate of more than 30 percent a year.

Because, you know, a bank would never dream of charging similar rates of interest on their poor credit risk customers.