Hand Over That $700 Billion Right NOW and Nobody Gets Hurt

Hurry up! Pass this bill Right NOW. We don’t have time for amendments or debate or procedures or any of that drivel. This is an Emergency! The entire economy could collapse any minute, and you're just sitting there dithering?!?!?!?!

Does this manufactured hysteria have a familiar ring to it? Think back to the summer of 2002 (and continuing through March of 2003). Saddam Hussein has Weapons of Mass Destruction! He has nuclear missiles pointing right at Your Family, and his finger is on the button! We don’t have time to argue about this. While we dither, Saddam Hussein is getting ready to attack! We have to Act NOW.

This phony “urgency” worked like a charm in 2003. Will it work again?

This Wall Street bailout — sort of a Patriot Act for Wall Street — would turn the Secretary of the Treasury into an all-powerful unaccountable czar. It would provide a $700 billion bailout with absolutely no strings attached. No regulation or oversight (which might actually prevent this from happening again); no limits on those famous 8-figure golden parachutes that executives keep rewarding themselves with every time they fuck up. And most importantly, no giveaways to those sniveling homeowners who should've known what they were doing.

Congress needs to hold out for what's right. (Warning: spines may be required.) Attaching a few strings to this humongous bailout is not only the right thing to do (in case that matters) — it’s also politically shrewd given the public’s fury at Wall Street right now.

When Romania was part of the Communist Bloc (their dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, was overthrown and executed in 1989), it was probably Europe’s poorest country. On top of that, everyone in the country was required — maybe it was just a strong suggestion, but in a police state, you know what that means — to give money and presents to the incredibly wealthy Ceausescu family during Christmas and other holidays.

Little did we know that twenty years later, on Wall Street…

cross-posted at Bring It On!