The reasons that the White House spokesman gives for spending billions of taxpayer dollars on failing financial institutions sounds like a list of tired old clichés.

The White House says that billions of taxpayer dollars are needed because the financial institution is just too big to fail or a new cash infusion is necessary due to systemic risk.

Several weeks ago, Barack Obama said that Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner was about to unveil a plan the very next day to address the toxic assets on the balance sheets of America's leading financial services firms.

Geithner did appear the following day with a general outline of a program and said that he would soon be back with details of the actual plan. Unfortunately, he has not been seen in public since and neither has the new financial services bailout plan.

Meanwhile, the treasury has been changing the terms and conditions of the original Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout plan. Last week, the government converted much of its Citigroup preferred stock into common shares. The result was a 36% taxpayer stake in the troubled bank. In this exchange, the taxpayer lost billions of dollars in a few short months and the 5% dividend of the preferred was lost to the taxpayer with the conversion into common shares.

Yesterday, American International Group (AIG) received another 30 billion of taxpayer dollars from the United States Treasury to make that firms total reach 180 billion dollars of taxpayer subsidy. The dubious reason that AIG needed this immediate taxpayer cash infusion is because it just lost more money in the last quarter than any firm in American history. In fact, those massive losses at AIG have no end in sight.

So, unlike General Motors and the entire automobile industry, financial services firms can receive billions of taxpayer dollars and they do not even have to submit a business viability plan. It really makes very little sense.

Meanwhile, as rules of the (TARP) program change almost weekly, the stock market appears to have reached the melting point. The market decline from its high now exceeds 50% and there is no real end to declining stock prices in sight. It has become clear that instead of clichés, the White House needs a real financial services industry plan and it needs to propose it right away.

The model for resolution to this crisis in the financial services industry could well be based on the experience of the Savings and Loan crisis many years ago. Many on Wall Street believe that there needs to be an isolation of the banks toxic assets on the industry balance sheets. Some people call this a good bank, bad bank scenario. The market also needs to see a coherent toxic assets pricing plan.

Trillion dollar stimulus spending, and next years 8% proposed federal budget increase with thousands of government earmarks is political in nature and will not solve the current economic mess. and does nothing to provide any economic confidence.

This crisis started in the banks and any solution must address the toxic assets on the financial industry balance sheets. The Treasury needs to propose a comprehensive solution with the hope that it works. After months of the changing rules of TARP, time is now growing short. Soon, the current deep recession will spiral into an economic depression without a comprehensive Treasury Plan.

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