Did You Hear What I Heard about the Paulson Bailout?

Did I hear MSNBC's financial guy this morning say that the Paulson multi-billion Christmas gift to Wall Street actually includes a provision that would make it hard, if not impossible, for these incompetent thieves to pay back the US taxpayer?

Will anybody ever haul Bush, Paulson, Rumsfeld, Pearle, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and all their Executive, Legislative, and Judicial cronies to a guillotine for the most concentrated acts of treason ever to manifest on US soil? Compared to the Bush crimes, the Civil War was petty.

I don't get it. The flabby, lamby-pamby nonsense coming out of Congress today makes me sick. And I'm not at all pleased that Obama is traipsing down the same old bail-out path that Bush took.
I don't buy it.

Cash-Carry? Are You Kidding Me?

I hear that Treasury Secretary Paulson has appointed a guy named Neel Kashkari to oversee the $850 Billion bailout--and check his qualifications:

"A Goldman Sachs Group alumnus in charge of the nation’s economic rescue? How unusual.

"Except, of course, it isn’t. As The Wall Street Journal’s Deborah Solomon reported today, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is promoting Neel Kashkari, the Treasury’s assistant secretary for international affairs, to be the point man overseeing the $700 billion financial bailout as the interim head of Paulson’s Office of Financial Stability. The full appointment would need Senate confirmation, which is unlikely to come given the short remaining tenure in this Administration.


"The move essentially puts a new title on what Kashkari he has been doing since he joined Treasury in 2006–examining the consequences of an economic housing fallout. Kashkari was one of three Treasury staffers–including general counsel Robert Hoyt and head of legislative affairs Kevin Fromer–who stayed up until 4 a.m. last Sunday putting together the $700 billion bailout bill that was shot down by House Republicans the next day.

"Kashkari is an Indian-American who has a few things in common with Paulson (above right). Both are former Goldman Sachs bankers, though Kashkari, at 35 years old, is much younger and was just a vice president-level banker in Goldman’s San Francisco technology banking effort when Paulson tapped him to join Treasury. Both also are Midwesterners. Kashkari grew up in Stow, Ohio, and earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Paulson was raised in Barrington Hills, Ill. And both sport similar hairstyles– or lack thereof.

"Kashkari didn’t take a conventional route into banking. He started out as an aerospace engineer at TRW, developing technology for NASA projects like the James Webb Space Telescope, the replacement to Hubble, which is scheduled to launch in 2013."

Ahhhhhhh, I Fink I See the Light

You know how I've been saying that something doesn' quite meet the eye about this Paulson bailout proposal? I mean, I keep hearing that not one single economist can be found who thinks this is the way to unfreeze credit, and not one person can be found who likes it. So why would BushCo propose it, I wondered, wondered I.

I heard something on Hardball today that may answer this question. One of Squeeky's guests said that Wall Street would "say" to Obama: "You're proposing all this new spending (healthcare, infrastructure, college loans, renewable energy development, etc.). Well, you can have that, or you can have this (bailout). Which will it be?"

That, Dear Readers, may be the missing piece of the puzzle. THAT would explain why a radically "free" market administration in its waning days would intervene in a market to the tune of $700 Billion.

The good news is that I also understand that Obama has seen that little move coming and inserted into the measure a clause that sticks Wall Street with any difference between the bailout amount and the sum earned for the taxpayers when these bundled "assets" are sold. The trick will be to sell them before the end of Obama's first term, or make recouping the loss a visible part of his re-election bid four years from now.

Have I mentioned? Republicans need to man up and admit that 30 years of Reaganomics got us where we are today, and McCain and his finance adviser Gramm were driving that truck.

Regarding the Bailout . . .

Thanks to the fabulous Dependable Renegade

Phil Gramm, Wendy Gramm, Enron, Energy Crisis, and CA

In December 2001, Public Citizen, the respected independent nonprofit research group, published this report on the key roles played by McCain's finance czar, Senator Phil Gramm and his wife, Enron board member Wendy, in the Enron energy swindle that caused California's devastating energy crisis in the first half of 2001.
Read this readable but detailed indictment of Bush, Enron, the Gramms, and the enabling GOP of deregulating the state wholesale energy industry and the commodities trading market.

Then think about what's happening today and which party is likelier to have your and your children's interests in mind.