Monday, September 22, 2008

Too Little, Too Late?

The $700 Billion Dollar Bungle is moving ever closer to a vote.

Democrats have successfully added "mortgage help", though I'm not yet sure what that means.

Worse:

In one expansion of its original proposal, the administration is asking for broad power to buy up virtually any kind of bad asset — including credit card debt or car loans — from any financial institution in the U.S. or abroad in order to stabilize markets.

You've read that right. We've gone from making sure our well-connected friends in high places (who, I might add, are part of starting this mess) to offering to accept bad debt from around the globe. After all, with a blank check of this size, one must spread the wealth no? After all, it's not your money they're playing with...oh wait.

Frank said he and Paulson had agreed to create a congressional oversight board as part of the bailout and to mandate that the government come up with a plan to avoid foreclosures on any mortgages it acquires in the rescue. A government official with knowledge of the talks confirmed the administration backs those provisions.

Well, some oversight might be nice, but then again, the same people overseeing this are the ones willing to sign off blindly on this bailout without listening to cooler, more disconnected heads.

There is a small light revealed in this article, however:

And in a fresh sign of a challenging road ahead, Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the top Banking Committee Republican, blasted the emerging plan as "neither workable nor comprehensive."

"In my judgment, it would be foolish to waste massive sums of taxpayer funds testing an idea that has been hastily crafted and may actually cause the government to revert to an inadequate strategy of ad hoc bailouts," Shelby said.


Will it be enough? Will your calls and the calls of your countrymen be enough?

I hope so.

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"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." – Thomas Jefferson