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Bailout Talks Lose Sight of the Cost Question

"The present value of the interest payments is next to irrelevent -- unless you are a Wall Street "analyst" and forget to take the present value of the interest costs... This ranks right up there with EBITDA -- or the most recent Wall Street stupidity: earnings before all costs."

Wall Street needs to learn some basic math skills. Well, if you are the Treasury and receiving (hypothetically) 18% in annual returns (which incorporates expected interest payments less expected default losses) on your investment and your cost of capital is 3.5%, is the present value of your annual payments really 0? Also, I believe the statement was that they would make 1 billion -- that is an absolue amount, not the NPV of future earnings.

Maybe NPV is more relevant, but get your facts straight and get off your condesending high horse. Actually, strike my last comment, I agree that most analysts on Wall Street are morons and need some basic math lessons.