OK, problem solved. New problems are born.

We just had back-to-back interviews with two economists (Christopher Carroll of Johns Hopkins and Anil Kashyap of Chicago) who both said today's move by the government — buying shares in several large banks — will help end the immediate crisis.

Kashyap, though, says there are huge problems with the way the U.S. government will buy the stocks. Specifically, he's upset that Treasury will allow banks to give unlimited dividends to their shareholders.

This could result in banks taking billions of taxpayer dollars and then giving it as a gift to shareholders. That is a bad thing, he says, for many reasons. It's just not fair and is a lousy deal for taxpayers. Worse, it will decapitalize the banks (make their balance sheets smaller) just when they so desperately need to recapitalize. He says that's the kind of silliness that created a decade-long slowdown in Japan.

All in all, though, he says the good outweighs the bad in this move. Although he desperately hopes the U.S. people will demand from Congress a cap on bank stock dividends.