The toxic roundabout

The US Treasury's plan to sell off toxic, I mean "legacy", assets at mouth-wateringly attractive levels of gearing is now being hijacked by US banks. Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase are all mustard keen to participate in the auctions. This is hilarious as the whole point of the exercise was to help banks sell, not buy, rancid securities and loans, and now these same banks want to use taxpayers money to take on more poison and more leverage. It just goes to show that one bank's poison becomes another bank's meat if the terms are sufficiently juicy but it's also worth remembering the Chinese cautionary tale about drinking poisonous liquid to quench one's thirst.