The idea is the government would lend investors the money at sub market rates (ding, subsidy), for non recourse loans (ding, subsidy) to buy the big sh$#pile.
A non recourse loan is, "secured by a pledge of collateral, typically real property, but for which the borrower is not personally liable," so the if you buy a piece of the big sh$#pile, and it goes bad, you don't have to pay the loan back.
As a mental exercise, let's assume that you buy 10 CDOs for $1 million each, and the government loans you 90% of the money to do so. 9 of the 10 are worthless, and you thus lose $900,000.00, with the US government losing $8,100,000.00, but that the 10th, which you bought at 33¢ on the dollar, pays off in full, so your $1million purchase is worth $3,000,000.00, so you pay back the US government, leaving $2,100,000.00, and then split the proceeds, so you and Uncle Sam each get $1,050,000.00.
This means that you cleared $50K on a $1 million investment, and Geithner and His Evil Minions™ just lost $7,050,000.00 of taxpayer money.
Not great, but considering the fact that $10 million was put in, and $7 million of that was lost, it's pretty good for you.
As Calculated Risk notes it's another attempt to overpay for bad assets.
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