Thursday, December 13, 2007   Central banks pumping billions
into world financial system  Why? Because they are scared. This
is the real bailout. Not that amorphous plan from President
Bush.  Only an estimated 250,000 borrowers, at best, are likely
to benefit from the plan’s main relief measure — a five-year
freeze on certain adjustable loans’ introductory rates. Yet,
from mid-2007 to now, some 800,000 homeowners have entered
foreclosure. From 2008 through mid-2010, when the last of the
potentially eligible loans would otherwise reset to sharply
higher payments, there will be an estimated 3.5 million loan
defaults.  The plan is too little, too late and too voluntary.
Mr. Paulson and his boss, President Bush, have left it to the
private sector — the mortgage industry — to protect the public
interest, without any negative consequences if it does not. That
is not the way the private sector works. And it is not how
government is supposed to work at a time when Americans are
facing mass foreclosures that threaten