Market designers claimed the problem stemmed from an absence of liquidity, not—crucially— pervasive insolvency. In their frame, banks possessed a variety of assets, some worthless but most others pretty valuable, and it was the inability to distinguish between the two that caused the crisis. By purchasing these assets, the government would reestablish liquidity, not merely by removing toxic assets from the banks’ balance sheets, but by releasing information that would establish the assets’ true values.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 855