Toles, Washington PostPaul Simon wrote, "...it's all happening at the zoo. I do believe it, I do believe it's true." He wrote that in 1967 but it's spot on to describe the denizens of Pennsylvania Ave. (N.W.) today.
America's fiscal crisis has swept Pennsylvania Ave., from the Capitol building at one end to the White House at the other, like a wildfire racing through a zoo. The beasts are in full panic.
I got the full measure of that last night watching, you guessed it, The Daily Show, when Jon Stewart laid out the conditions US Treasury Secretary, Henry Merrit Paulson Jr., has imposed on Congress before he'll accept their $700-billion bailout money.
Basically, Paulson has described he'll take their filthy lucre but only on condition that there's no oversight on what he does with the stuff. No accountability whatsoever. He even wants a condition expressly stated that how he doles it out - and to whom can't be reviewed by any court.
The beasts, hearing the crackle of flames and choking on the acrid smoke, appear willing to agree to anything if only someone will make this nightmare go away. Anything, anything, just ask and it's yours.
Of course it's not their money anyway, not really. The $700-billion doesn't exist, not within the United States. The government doesn't have it, they're already running multi-hundred billion dollar deficits funding wars of choice and tax cuts for the rich. But there are places to get it. China has that kind of money - and they have it in US dollar holdings to boot. You know, that Wal-Mart money they rake in from filling the shelves of America's top retailer.
It's not like they're going to stiff the taxpayers with it either. No, the Chinese offer easy-credit plans that let you pawn it all off on today's voters' kids and grandkids and their kids and grandkids. Since Bush showed up, that's practically become the American Way. Do whatever you like, just keep the pain out of the immediate voting cycle and hope it won't show up at the ballot box.
Make it go away - for now.
It looks as though the beasts will get their way. The Dems are trying to draw a couple of lines in the sand. They're balking at the zero-oversight demand and they want the bailout subject to conditions that taxpayers be compensated with an equity position in the firms bailed out.
America's fiscal crisis has swept Pennsylvania Ave., from the Capitol building at one end to the White House at the other, like a wildfire racing through a zoo. The beasts are in full panic.
I got the full measure of that last night watching, you guessed it, The Daily Show, when Jon Stewart laid out the conditions US Treasury Secretary, Henry Merrit Paulson Jr., has imposed on Congress before he'll accept their $700-billion bailout money.
Basically, Paulson has described he'll take their filthy lucre but only on condition that there's no oversight on what he does with the stuff. No accountability whatsoever. He even wants a condition expressly stated that how he doles it out - and to whom can't be reviewed by any court.
The beasts, hearing the crackle of flames and choking on the acrid smoke, appear willing to agree to anything if only someone will make this nightmare go away. Anything, anything, just ask and it's yours.
Of course it's not their money anyway, not really. The $700-billion doesn't exist, not within the United States. The government doesn't have it, they're already running multi-hundred billion dollar deficits funding wars of choice and tax cuts for the rich. But there are places to get it. China has that kind of money - and they have it in US dollar holdings to boot. You know, that Wal-Mart money they rake in from filling the shelves of America's top retailer.
It's not like they're going to stiff the taxpayers with it either. No, the Chinese offer easy-credit plans that let you pawn it all off on today's voters' kids and grandkids and their kids and grandkids. Since Bush showed up, that's practically become the American Way. Do whatever you like, just keep the pain out of the immediate voting cycle and hope it won't show up at the ballot box.
Make it go away - for now.
It looks as though the beasts will get their way. The Dems are trying to draw a couple of lines in the sand. They're balking at the zero-oversight demand and they want the bailout subject to conditions that taxpayers be compensated with an equity position in the firms bailed out.
Even some Republicans are now lining up behind Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd.
The Democrats have also decided to include a group left out of the Bush Bailout - struggling homeowners. Since the Feds are going to wind up owning a lot of these bad mortgages anyway, it actually may be better for taxpayers to find some compromise that keeps these people in their homes and gets them to make payments they can afford.
Now I know a lot of you right-wingers will recoil at the suggestion of writing down some little guy's mortgage debt and settling for what they can pay but let me tell you, from lengthy personal experience, that we've been doing that for businesses for years.
I was involved in a lot of receiverships in the early 80's. Back then the banks would appoint a receiver, trigger a bankruptcy and then just have the receiver-trustee firesale the assets. That led to recoveries of pennies on the dollar. It took a while but finally the banks figured out that the trigger they were pulling led to a barrel at their own heads too. That's when they started looking at work-outs, settlements. Better to write off 20% if it keeps the business going and recovers interest and principal on the remaining 80% than get 10-cents on the dollar right now. That's the same thing they're talking about with home foreclosures.
Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do.
"Basically, Paulson has described he'll take their filthy lucre but only on condition that there's no oversight on what he does with the stuff. No accountability whatsoever. He even wants a condition expressly stated that how he doles it out - and to whom can't be reviewed by any court."
ReplyDeleteGood point. I was wondering where the $700 bn figure came from when I found this dainty item in Forbes : In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.
"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."
Then farther down, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd "proposed his own counter-proposal to Paulson's plan earlier this week. Among other things, it calls for limits on executive compensation at troubled firms and for the Treasury to take a contingent equity stake in those firms. On Tuesday, Paulson rebuffed both ideas, as it might discourage firms from participating in the bailout program."
Well, we can't have them not participating can we. Paulson seems to think he holds all the cards. Got everyone scared shitless.
Then Dodd observes the obviously naked Emperor: Paulson, the bill's chief architect, is scheduled to leave office in just four months.
"I'm not about to give a $700 billion appropriation to a secretary I don't know yet," says Dodd.