Why are the Democrats smiling like they just hit the lottery? Because they did. The Congressional leaders and the White House have apparently reached an agreement on the US$700 billion bailout of the super-rich. They’re overjoyed because the spotlight on them for allowing this to happen has been extinguished (they think) and they can scurry home to campaign for re-election.
When I began writing this, the New York Times had a completely different image accompanying its story, one with everyone in the frame laughing almost uncontrollably. Why was the photograph changed to the current one where everyone looks much more sedate? And why is the original image simply nowhere to be found?
And just what does the American taxpayer get for taking on this enormous, no-hope-for-a-balanced-budget ever again, staggering debt load? Pretty much a bag of rocks:
- Limits on some (but not all) executive compensation whose firms take part in the bailout.
- Requirements to make “aggressive efforts” to prevent home foreclosures (but no actual, specific requirements or plan).
- Equity in some (but not all) companies that participate in the bailout.
- Oversight by a Congressional panel (that’s right—the same Congresscritters that allowed this to happen are going to be overseeing this mess).
- “Conflict-of-interest” rules (unspecified, natch) for the same financial firms that caused this mess who get to run the bailout.
- Provided an option for the Treasury Secretary to issue government insurance on the toxic assets (like trying to insure a house that’s already on fire). The creation of the insurance program is mandatory but it’s implementation is not.
What a deal. Except we don’t know for sure because, as Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane report in the Washington Post, full details of the bailout plan have not yet been released. This performance, after all, is solely for the benefit and consumption of the foreign markets that open later today.
