I was just listening to NPR's Planet Money podcast #21- A New Plan for Toxic Assets and heard this little snippet about the problem with toxic assets:
'Critical to getting a market going is some way of describing what's in [these toxic assets]. It's a problem of information. You can't just sell people a black box. You have to assemble as much detail as you can reasonably get on what's actually in [these toxic assets]. And that's hard to do. If you're talking about thousands of home mortgages, you can't go into the detail of each borrower.' ~Min: 9:30
Did I hear that right? Is the solution to market liquidity a problem of labor? If we have 1000s of people who could dive into the credit history and detail of each borrower, would we be able to grease the market and liquidate the toxic assets at agreed-upon prices?
Moreover, can we task the crowd on this task?? If this is what's meant by giving back to your country... if spending a few minutes here and a few there to assemble details about borrower histories will fix the problem, then I've got a feeling that we'd all do our part - and make quick work of it.
I know nothing is ever that simple... but as the problem was laid out on Planet Money, it seems that the assumption of the problem forgoes a crowdsourced solution.
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