Despite statements of confidence coming from Congressional leaders and the White House, there's clearly a great level of anxiety among the rank-and-file members of Congress about the White House's plan to buy up flatlining mortgage assets with some $700 billion and backstop a feared collapse of the credit market.
On ESPN, other cable outlets and local news programs, columnists depart temporarily from print journalism, with its backstopping of editors, to offer viewpoints that, if inappropriate, may be deleted only if the program is taped.
During batting practice, Epstein shook hands and chatted behind the backstop with some of the Red Sox players he drafted (Dustin Pedroia) and signed (Carl Crawford) and traded for (Adrian Gonzalez).
In 2007, they were asked by a solar panel manufacturer to come up with some insurance that would backstop the 20- or 25-year warranties that prospective customers were demanding.
Most troublesome of all were those whose difficulties infected the banks, because the banks had either lent them money or had provided them with a backstop of some kind.
The mission in Libya, driven by the UK and France, succeeded, but only with the US backstopping it every step of the way with a technological infrastructure that no other NATO member could match even before the crisis of the Eurozone.
This time, the German central bank will inject 20 billion euros ($27.3 billion) into the package while a group of financial firms will add 15 billion euros ($25 billion), with a guarantee that the total loan will be repaid with the government backstopping 26.5 billion euros ($36.2 billion) of the loan.
In the event of widespread defaults, the lenders' 10% capital would offer an initial buffer, with the FMIC backstopping the remaining 90%.The plan is neatly packaged, but worrying.
One major and legitimate concern expressed by some of Senator Brown's predecessors (including Louis Brandeis, then a prominent skeptic of banking practices and later a Supreme Court justice) was that providing bankers with a government backstop would enable some of them – particularly those already running large financial institutions in New York – to become even more powerful.
When they met in Paris, Roddick had a spectacular collision with a backstop and retired at one set all.
