“We did this to protect the taxpayer” and other funny stuff.

As I listen to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, along with Bush, Bernake and various senators and congressmen talk about the financial crisis on TV, I am struck by how they all use the same terms, as if they have a list of talking points:

It’s “toxic debt” and a plan needs to be passed “quick and clean.” And, “It is necessary to act and act now, or face catastrophe.” And my personal favorite from Paulson: “We did this to protect the taxpayer.”

I really had to laugh over that last one. Because if you believe this “plan” is going to protect anyone except the Wall Street titans and the government that works for them, then I have some sub-prime B.S. I’d like to sell you, too.

Don’t know about you but I get a queasy feeling when the Bush Admin. pushes hard to sell something on the Sunday morning talk shows. You remember: Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, and let’s hope the smoking gun doesn’t come in the form of a mushroom cloud. Or how about this one: The U.S. government doesn’t torture. (We just send people off to those countries that do.)

Barney Frank (Dem. From Mass.) added more flavor on CBS’ Face the Nation: "What they told us was the contagion here and the depression in the market was such that you were going to see a shutdown of the lending businesses not just on Wall Street but for all Americans."

A shut down of credit? In America?! That is major pants-pooping material!

The other thing I find frightening about this Brazilian-dollar bail out is that apparently the “assets” will be managed by the very people who got us into this mess in the first place.

Writing in his column at Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald calls what is happening a crime. He brings up some profound points:

“What is more intrinsically corrupt than allowing people to engage in high-reward/no-risk capitalism -- where they reap tens of millions of dollars and more every year while their reckless gambles are paying off, only to then have the Government shift their losses to the citizenry at large once their schemes collapse? We've retroactively created a win-only system where the wealthiest corporations and their shareholders are free to gamble for as long as they win and then force others who have no upside to pay for their losses. 

 Watching Wall St. erupt with an orgy of celebration on Friday after it became clear the Government (i.e., you) would pay for their disaster was literally nauseating, as the very people who wreaked this havoc are now being rewarded. 

More amazingly, they're free to walk away without having to disgorge their gains; at worst, they're just ‘forced’ to walk away without any further stake in the gamble. How can these bailouts not at least be categorically conditioned on the disgorgement of ill-gotten gains from those who are responsible? … Why should those who so fantastically profited from these schemes they couldn't support walk away with their gains?

This is ‘redistribution of wealth’ and ‘government takeover of industry’ on the grandest scale imaginable -- the buzz-phrases that have been thrown around for decades to represent all that is evil and bad in the world. That's all this is; it's not an "investment" by the Government in any real sense but just a magical transfer of losses away from those who are responsible for these losses to those who aren't.” 

Funny stuff, huh?