Call it insurance

I missed this from Floyd Norris last Friday:

The government will offer retroactive insurance to money market funds to assure they don’t lose money on the risky assets they bought.

Calling it insurance is a great idea. Think of the suffering that could have been avoided in New Orleans if the government had offered retroactive flood insurance after Katrina hit.

And now that we're up to something like a trillion clams of public money to fix the failed financials, I do have to wonder what that much would have done for the Crescent City.