I am boggled they are getting bonuses. That should be illegal.

You ask good questions... exactly WHY do they want to ask for the *largest* bailout in history AND not have to say what they're doing with the money at the same time??

Furthermore, they're trying to paint Democrats as the bad guys in this because they're holding out that CEOs involved in collapses like this shouldn't get golden parachutes.... which the GOP then says is "stalling the solution"


Remember the Patriot Act? Remember how when people asked for some time to review it -- they were "holding up progress" and giving the "bad guys more time"?

I really want a job where they will pay me millions of dollars to leave.

Not just pay you to leave, but pay you to leave after you'd failed miserably!

Reading through my f-list and nobody else is talking about this, so you win the prize for being awake, Jake. I agree with you, of course. We are being robbed.

>>And the fucking Democrats seem to be lining up on this madness.<<

Yeah, I just read an article where even grumpy Charlie Rangel said that if we don't take drastic action soon, we could wind up with another Depression.

You know, I've been trying to write more political LJ entries lately, but every time it occurs to me that we're taking massive steps into socialism under a party that praises the free market and talks about how much they hate government intervention in business, my mouth just sort of makes choking noises instead of speech.

>but every time it occurs to me that we're taking massive steps into socialism under a party that praises the free market and talks about how much they hate government intervention in business, my mouth just sort of makes choking noises instead of speech

You and me both. But you should read some of the comments on right wing newspaper sites here (I'm in the UK) that remark on how 'a socialist government [Labour] has got us into this mess' , basically with their pinko commie policies. Er.....

Our government is appalling. But the above betrays a level of incomprehension that verges on lunacy.

Actually, are the decisions actually secret? The "non-reviewable" part appears to be related to the following prohibitions on court and executive branch review.

The linked proposal does require a report to Congress every three months, where I'm sure the Congress will grill the administration. Although not spelled out, I will be surprised if the Congress does not have the Secretary of the Treasury testify before at least one committee.

While the size of the bailout is troubling, I wonder how similar it is to the whole savings and loan bailout and resulting Resolution Trust Corporation. We seem to have survived that just fine.

By the way, while not a fan of the Republicans, I do believe that without this bailout, the full faith and credit backing the dollar would likely collapse. However, golden parachutes for the idiots who got us in to this mess is unconscionable.

Unfortunately those golden parachutes are embedded in the employment contracts of the various players, so they're probably not going away barring some kind of wholesale Federal action, which will be tied up in years of litigation by rich people's lawyers should it take place.

As for the RTC, it managed and disposed of the assets of already failed S&Ls. This bailout is to keep major banks from failing, quite a different kettle of fish, as it lets the managers and investors offload their risk to the taxpayers. At least with the RTC, the S&L managers and investors had already absorbed whatever penalties and losses which were coming to them.

This one's a get-out-of-jail free card -- more of the socialization of risk/privatization of profit trend so beloved of the GOP -- not a clean up on aisle 7.

One of the things that really, and I mean REALLY, bothers me about this bailout stuff is when the experts start talking about the "bad paper" that AIG and the rest need to dispose. That "bad paper" when you distill it down to its base components are foreclosures, closed home equity lines of credit and other real life disasters that have already impacted real life people. To me a better bailout would have been to float those government loans to the homeowners, thus turning the "bad paper" into "good paper" and shoring up the mess from the bottom up.

Where is my neighbor's get-out-of-jail-free card Mr. Secretary?

Hear, hear. Why wasn't this even an option? Too socialist for these Neo-Socialists who call themselves champions of the free market? WTF?

I mean, seriously, what would have happened if Dems called for a bailout of consumers so that they could have kept their homes by simply having the gov't alter those bad loans from crazy interest to reasonable rates? But no, that would have been beyond the pale.

I really, really hate this administration. I mean, really.

Is there any chance that the shareholders can sue these guys with the golden parachutes for restitution?

-- Steve's appalled that the captains who rammed the iceberg in this case are the first ones to the lifeboat.

Best reaction I've seen thus far is on Sadly, No;

"If there was ever a time to stand athwart history and yell “EAT ME!!!” it’s now."

...that is, in spirit, if not in fact.

How we became the United States of France

For further reading, I suggest, E pluribus hokum or, The gamblers bail out the casino