I don't have $700 billion to spare. Do you?
Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration asked Congress for unchecked power to buy $700 billion in bad mortgage investments from U.S. financial companies in what would be an unprecedented government intrusion into the markets.
The plan, designed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, is aimed at averting a credit freeze that would bring the financial system and economic growth to a standstill. The bill would bar courts from reviewing actions taken under its authority.
"It sounds like Paulson is asking to be a financial dictator, for a limited period of time,'' said historian John Steele Gordon, author of "Hamilton's Blessing,'' a chronicle of the national debt. "This is a much-needed declaration of power for the Treasury secretary. We can't wait until the next administration in January.''
If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public--all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims.
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo says:
I know enough to be troubled that we appear ready to give upwards of a trillion dollars in unfettered and unreviewable spending authority to the ... let's face it, the Bush administration, the folks who did such a bang up job in Iraq and New Orleans.
This morning a friend told me it's like the Iraq War all over again -- Shock & Awe, followed by an occupation of Wall Street, and all with no exit plan.
Glenn Greenwald at Salon says:
If there is any "pitchfork moment" -- an episode that understandably would send people into the streets in mass outrage -- it would be this. Nobody really even seems to know how much of these losses "the Government" -- meaning working people who had no part in the profits from these transactions -- is undertaking virtually overnight but it's at least a trillion dollars, an amount so vast it's hard to comprehend, let alone analyze in terms of consequences. The transactions are way too complex even for the most sophisticated financial analysts to understand, let alone value. Whatever else is true, generations of Americans are almost certainly going to be severely burdened in untold ways by the events of the last week -- ones that have been carried out largely without any debate and mostly in secret.
Pitchforks!
Classic. Elegant.
But you'll fail the saving throw against microwave cannons.
Doh! At least we can still be snarky. It may well be the only currency we have soon.
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