#21 A New Plan For Toxic Assets

The Treasury Department unveiled the details of a public-private investment program to help banks get toxic assets off their books today. The plan calls for using $75 to $100 billion from the TARP, Troubled Assets Relief Program, along with funding from private investors, to buy as much as $500 billion worth of these assets. In another Planet Money Radio Dramatization, David Kestenbaum and Caitlin Kenney explain how it's expected to work.

The new program already has its critics, but Columbia Business School professor and former investment banker David Beim isn't one of them. Beim says he thinks it's a good plan for the country.

Plus: The success of the program has big implications for the Obama Administration and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. U.S. policy analyst Sean West of Eurasia Group tells us how he thinks it will play out, politically.