Appeared on October 22, 2007
Joseph Mason, a finance professor at Drexel University, sees bigger problems. He argues that voluntary co-guarantee schemes like this are doomed to failure because only the weakest institutions want to participate. Like Groucho Marx, the SIVs that most easily qualify for membership of the club will be the least likely to want to join, since they will have cheaper funding alternatives. He also worries that the fund's creation suggests “we now have an entire market that's deemed too big to fail.”