The Dow Plunges Nearly 400 Points as Street Rejects Geithner's Plan

I am still trying to figure out why the market tanked so hard today. I thought Wall Street was waiting with baited breath for the stimulus package to be passed which it was. Last week the market rallied on its supposed passing but did not drastically tank when it did not, it was ultimately sent back for more tweaking. Granted the tweaking was ridiculous since the Senate and House Bills were only a few billion dollars off and in a bill worth over $800 billion, the supposed tweaks were muscle flexing without any true consequence.

Anyhow, Wall Street must have been disgruntled with the new Treasury Secretary's proposal for the remaining TARP funds. I am understanding that the market went down nearly 400 points because it is possible that Investors did not like the fact that additional funds would be needed - everyone knows that the proposals are not nearly what is required but we are too far in debt to provide the truly costly package that is needed, they did not like the public-private investment partnership that was proposed - well the financial institutions have soaked up the first round of TARP funds plus the trillions from the Treasury and the Federal Reserve and still have not freed up the credit markets opting to keep the money to shore up their balance sheets and underwrite their bonus packages, and lastly they did not like that there were not anymore specifics on the remainder of the TARP funds because he mentioned that banks would be held more accountable and their balance sheets would now be "stress-tested" for market viability before they received more funds.

Apparently there is confusion in the plan, it did not explain the whole "bad-bank" proposal that would now buy up bad assets, Paulson's original plan that was never implemented, and it seemed to indicate that banks receiving bailout funds must adhere to more stringent rules where they would be required to lend but mostly the Street is unhappy because Treasury Secretary Geithner did not provide enough specifics of the whole plan. Too Bad.

The market certainly went hopping and ga-ga over Paulson's original 3 page bailout proposal to Congress but now that the Treasury Secretary states that the financial crisis is still bad and there is still lots of risk, the Street is choking. It seems to me that Investors are plain old mad that the Government is not promising to do all the spending itself; it expects Investors to help out. All the Investors want is a full-fledged Government Guarantee of funds. They did not get it today. Good. Let's start playing by some rules. Wall Street can't continue to reap bonuses without some skin in the game.