It's hard to get ones mind around $700+ billion, the size of the latest proposed bailout of Wall Street investment bankers who recklessly and deliberately ravaged the economy for personal gain.... without government intervention and oversight.
Now that same government, the Bush administration, wants to make their Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, Tsar of the Economic Universe.
Paulson is demanding a taxpayer-financed bailout with no strings attached.... with nothing required of those being bailed out.... and dictatorial authority.
The Decider and The Dictator want Congress to decide now.
Hurry, hurry.... the financial-collapse train is bearing down on us. Give the totally inept Bush administration unfettered power and trust Rumsfel.... umm.... Paulson to do the right thing. Sound familiar? Isn't this how we got into the other big Bush mess, Iraq.
As Paul Krugman points out in his New York Times op-ed today, Cash for Trash, Paulson "is a smart guy, but what, exactly, in the experience of the past year and a half — a period during which Mr. Paulson repeatedly declared the financial crisis 'contained,' and then offered a series of unsuccessful fixes — justifies the belief that he knows what he’s doing?"
And, in line with the closed-door, secretive, subpoena-ignoring, won't-be-sworn-to-tell-the-truth Bush administration's modus operandi, mindbogglingly, Paulson is demanding also immunity from review “by any court of law or any administrative agency.”
This is unacceptable.
Has Congress.... the taxpayers elected representatives who are supposed to look out for the interests of Main Street, not Wall Street.... learned it's lesson?
Or, will they once again be railroaded without insisting on prudent safeguards, curbs on power, and that blatantly discarded concept.... ACCOUNTABILITY!
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