Two things that haven't been tried: Obama could ditch the TARP and start over with its original purpose--buying up bad assets from struggling firms.
In fact, the effort to recruit private investors into a government-led campaign to buy bad assets from the banks is still, at best, half a plan.
In recent weeks, talk of a government-created "bad bank" to absorb troubled assets resurfaced as a solution, as did a government insurance program to guarantee assets.
Bo Lundgren, one of the architects of Sweden's much-vaunted 1990s bank bail-out, stresses the importance of transparent valuations of bad assets.
ECONOMIST: Meltdown may have been averted. But the crunch is not over
Mervyn King's remarks that he wants to see RBS's poisonous and low quality assets hived off into a new so-called bad bank matter - but probably not in the way that seems most obvious.
At a late stage Mr Geithner rejected the idea of a government-run bad bank (as well as blanket guarantees for noxious assets), put off by the high upfront cost and the problems it would have valuing the debt.
The government could then separate bad assets from good, appoint new managers and reprivatise the cleaned-up bits by selling them to investors (ideally, including some foreigners).
Mr de Guindos is in the city to sell foreign investors on the so-called "bad bank", where Spain will park the poor property assets that are weighing down its lenders.
The nationalisation comes after the European Commission blocked an earlier plan that would have seen the country's other large banks, Rabobank, ING and ABN Amro, contribute capital to a so-called "bad bank" to house SNS Reaal's distressed property assets.
Taking in the good and the bad about these banks, she says removing these toxic assets will easily be a five- to 10-year process, because of the illiquid nature of real estate.
One part ("the bad bank") will assume all the residential and commercial real-estate loans and securitized mortgages as assets, and all the long-term debt as liabilities.
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