Ladies and Gents... the Paulson Administration

September 23, 2008

By Scott Cavanagh
I knew he could do it... knew it all along. Just when people were starting to write him off as finished--a lame duck with no more catastrophic plans or pathetic cronies left to unleash on the country and its citizens--George W. Bush has given us one more for the history books.

Now the administration that has provided us with so many memories--from the worst attack in our history, to the drowning of New Orleans, the acceptance of torture, the outing of a CIA agent, domestic spying, preemptive endless war and mind-boggling budget deficits --has managed to oversee the end of the modern American financial system.

But this is not just about events--it's about people--special people, like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove; Scooter Libby and Alberto Gonzalez; Harriet Miers and Mike "Way to go Brownie" Brown. These are people we were supposed to trust because George W. Bush told us to. Oops!

Now Bush and his cronies--the very people who have preached the gospel of unfettered, unregulated, greed-is-good capitalism for 30 years--want us to entrust one of them with the sole stewardship of $700 billion of our money--no questions asked.

That's right, only weeks after both Bush and his latest co-commander (remember the Petraeus Administration?)--Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson--deemed the fundamentals of our economy "strong" and our markets "flexible and resilient," the administration has decided that not only are we staring over the abyss of the next Great Depression--we need to immediately adopt their plan for recovery--with Paulson serving as our financial Il Duce in some quasi-socialist economic fiefdom--or else.

They have steered the old Ford directly into the ditch and now they want us to hand them the keys to the family Cadillac--because only they know the way out of this mess. In the immortal words of John McEnroe--they CANNOT be serious.

We all understand that the collapse of many of our oldest and most respected financial institutions requires swift and decisive action. However, the idea that a virtually sight-unseen plan, provided by the very people who got us into this mess--one that gives one man unlimited power with virtually no oversight--is the only answer, is not only stupid and short-sighted, it comes right out of the same tired "our way or the highway" play book that the incompetents in the Bush administration and their buddies on Capitol Hill have been utilizing for eight years.

These are the same guys that shoved the Patriot Act down our throats without even giving members of Congress time to read it. Remember Saddam Hussein? We had to go to war against him too. It was going to be easy, pay for itself with oil revenue and be over in months. That was five years, $556 Billion and 4,200 dead Americans ago. Remember how we had to privatize Social Security by letting people play the stock market? How's that idea sound right about now?
(Heck, John McCain suggested in 2004 that some of those Social Security benefits be invested in the sub-prime mortgage market. How's that for foresight?) Tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans in a time of war--why not? Taxing the rich equally would be socialism. Universal health care? Well, that would be socialism as well. Now they are all for socialism, although the form they are proposing sounds a bit more like fascism.

It appears there is nothing that can stop this bailout now--so all that is left is for the few non-eunuch Democrats with any fight in them to band together with the handful of actual fiscal conservatives that still exist, to fight for a few basic principles of common sense, oversight and fairness in this process. This could be their historic moment. Do this right and save their retirements and the Boomers may well build them a statue.

There can be no extravagant compensation packages for CEO's. If they don't like the reasonable compensation offered, FIRE THEM--with two weeks pay--like the rest of us. If we are going to lend these obviously bad credit risks billions of dollars, we need to charge them the same "high-risk" interest rates they would have slapped on us. Why in the world would we not want a return on our money--considering we are going to give it all right back to them to gamble away again anyway? There can be no bailout "Czar" with the powers proposed for Paulson and his successor at Treasury. A powerful Secretary--yes--another all-powerful, infallible Grand Poohbah--please, no.

Those concessions are not too much to ask in return for what is left of our national "cash flow."

Now the current president is calling on the two potential future presidents to call off their campaigns and tend to the business of getting on board the bailout express. They may end up having no choice in the matter, but I can't help but envision a time only a few months from now, when W will be sitting back choking on a pretzel in Crawford, while either John McCain or Barack Obama will see a lifetime of hard work and noble dedication destroyed by a an inherited Bush shitstorm that will turn one of these good men into the next Herbert Hoover.