Legalizing the Theft of this Century and the Last

Okay finally got the detail on the bizarro effort underway in Congress to strap the American taxpayers with all the costs of the drunken brawl and debauchery that have been Wall Street under the GOP.

Here is the current draft for the latest plan. It's brilliantly simple. The three key provisions: (1) The Treasury Secretary is authorized to buy up to $700 billion of any mortgage-related assets ( they can just transfer that amount to any corporations in exchange for their worthless or severely toxic "assets") [Sec. 6]; (2) The ceiling on the national debt is raised to $11.3 trillion to supposedly pay for this scheme [Sec. 10]; and (3)the kicker...wait for it:

"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency" [Sec. 8].

Translation, this bill authorizes Henry Paulson to transfer $700 billion of taxpayer money to private industry at his sole discretion, and nobody has the right or ability to review or challenge any decision he makes. Talk about the crime of the century. He can do anything with all this money and there is no recourse for the American taxpayer except "suck it up sucker."

Have you noticed that there is absolutely no punishment mentioned for the perpetrators of this fiasco? They all get to walk away free with their huge salaries and golden parachutes intact. No one is going to touch their bank account in the Bahamas or their big yacht or their private jet or the five or six houses they have around the country. Must be nice.