The implications of having a $700 billion bailout bill that has no oversight are staggering. This is corporate welfare in it's perfect form- naysayers will be ostracized, wafflers blitzed with a campaign of fear and the media absolutely complicit in letting these idiots have their checks.
The facts: The bill gives one man- Paulson, the power to buy up bad mortgages and make investments in struggling companies. HE decides. Does anyone else see 700 billion red flags in their head? If Paulson pays too little for an asset, he won’t stop the business from going under. If he pays too much, he enriches its shareholders. He has to figure out on his own what that perfect dollar amount is, who it goes to, and so on. These companies employ armies of lobbists who will pressure him to pay too much and generate a class of grateful investment bankers while taxpayers get the shaft, in the process avoiding a financial crisis but generating large costs down the line which will ballon the rich-poor gap in this country.
Its almost like Bush and the Treasury want to "deregulate" the bailout. Deregulation doesn't work. It didn't work for the California energy market, it didn't work for the S&Ls in the 80s, and it obviously isn't helping us now. When was the last time what congress does came close to impacting you as much as the five CEOs of these criminally negligent corporations? They were given the tools by Washington to screw up, and they are getting a free pass for it, paid for by us.
Everyone agrees that the consequences of ignoring the problem outweigh the flaws of the bill. But why is it so horrible to ask for accountibility and oversight? Will that somehow delay the immediate relief the market needs?
Isn't lack of oversight exactly how this happened?
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