It looks like a marathon session has put the last touches on the Bailout The Base Bill and actually made it useful. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Henry the FrankenFinancier and a couple of bipartisan senators announced the deal overnight.
According to the summary (not the actual deal on paper) the taxpayer gets an ownership stake and a chance to make some profit. Taxpayers are first in line for assets if one of the participating ‘banks’ goes Tango Uniform and the taxpayer gets a guaranteed profit.
There are limits on executive compensation. Plus the bill gives the government the ability to recover past bonuses based on promised gains that have turned to dried sewage flakes. The range of financial institutions able to use the de-vestment toilet has expanded a bit, but nothing too foolish.
Overall, based on Pelosi’s summary, the Bailout The Base Bill looks like a reasonable compromise: Henry the FrankenFinancier doesn’t get to run the Treasury Department like is own private fiefdom. The Taxpayer gets paid back first. Henry only gets $350 Billion to start with with some serious strings attached.
There are two provisions I don’t see:
1) Running the heads of the top five investment banks down Wall Street to Bowling Green Park, naked, chased by dogs and cops with nightsticks to the big bronze bull sculpture. There, the Wall Streeters will be exhibited, publicly shamed and tormented in stocks built especially for the occasion.
Chief Shamers and Tormentors? I’m thinking the laid off night shift from an auto plant in Detroit, Michigan. However, that might become medieval rapidly, which is not the objective.
Instead, we could get a twenty-voice chorus of chronic stutterers reading the speeches of Joe Biden, out loud, over speakers, to the guilty. Or, we can get Brittney Spears cheap. She can explain monetary policy to them. For a week.
2) No provision to take the head of the SEC, The Fed and the Secretary of the Treasury out for an afternoon duck hunting with Dick Cheney at the Undisclosed Location, no questions asked. Not that The Patriot Act would let you ask.
There are things that are not great, but like all good legislation, it is a reasonable compromise, which is about all you can hope for.
RoadDave 