8:13 PM … Hey, this guy’s pretty good.

8:17 PM … We’re going to pull some segments from that lengthy answer to question one. It’s really the argument that the inside DC mumbojumbo had not allowed him to make.

8:26 PM … You watch this performance and you can see that every day Republicans keep this guy off TV is a win for them. Like every great pol, Obama’s a great communicator. And he’s making the argument.

8:37 PM … Key passage from Obama’s answer to question one. Nice dig at the FDR revisionists …

Not long ago it seemed a given that the Obama bank rescue plan would be on the ‘bad bank’ model — i.e., you and I as taxpayers create what might more aptly be called a ‘suicide bank’ where you go to all the other banks and buy their poor investments at prices those banks wish they were still worth. Then, when that just seemed too silly it was going to be a plan to insure the banks against excessive loses on these bad investments. Sort of the slo-mo version of the bad bank. But CNBC is now reporting that the ‘bad bank’ is out. And they add these details …

The Obama administration’s wide-ranging plan to stabilize the financial system no longer includes creating a “bad bank” but will still contain measures to buy up toxic assets from financial institutions, according to a source familiar with the plan.

In addition, funding for the bank-rescue plan is unlikely to exceed the $350 billion currently available under the TARP, this source said.

So the ‘bad bank’ is out. There’s some vague talk of buying back ‘toxic debts’. But if I’m reading that right they’re not going to be asking for any more money.

As the same source tells CNBC, “They have to have enough to calm the markets, but there might not be as many details as previously thought.” I’d say that’s an understatement.

Obviously, we’ll know more details tomorrow with Geithner’s speech (or maybe not). And I’ll be very curious to see what others make of this. But this sure sounds to me like they’ve decided to punt. No big new plan. And no more money.

I wonder if what’s happening here is that they realize that none of these TARP-like workarounds are going to work. So no point asking for a politically and perhaps fiscally debilitating amount of money on something they’ll have to abandon in six months. But they also don’t have their ducks in a row yet, or haven’t come to grips yet, with something more like the Swedish model — which is to say, letting failed banks actually fail, government takes them over like has been happening to little banks, government runs the bank for a while and then sells it to private investors. Regardless, at least from CNBC’s discussion it looks like a big punt.

TPM Reader JC sent me to this interview with Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Taleb on CNBC. Here’s what JC wrote: “In this clip, Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Taleb are still being treated as a circus sideshow by CNBC… They’re predicting the end of finance, and offering the only clear path out of this mess that I’ve seen offered (with the knowledge to back it up), and CNBC keeps asking them for stock tips. It’s ludicrous. Wall Street media — CNBC at least — doesn’t realize how bad this is yet. They’re stuck in a bubble where they think everything will go back to normal in a few months….”

He hits it spot on. These two guys are talking about a deep structural crisis in the world economy. And these CNBC yahoos can’t stop asking for stock tips. Really surreal.

I’m watching it again now. This is a seminal piece of video. You have to see it. I’m not sure I’ve seen anything that captures — albeit unintentionally — the vast disconnect over what is happening today in the US economy.

TPMtv caught up with Robert Reich, former labor secretary and UC Berkeley professor. He gives us his take on the stimulus package (“Pretty good… Maybe not an A but an A minus”) and talks about how the financial crisis has to be taken as an opportunity to do more than simply get us back on the old track: “That track is filled with potholes and it’s going to eventually be so slippery we fall off the cliff again.”