Not another political post...

Sorry for this, but I just read the Paulson's bailout plan that Bush is supposed to be talking about tonight. And buried in the middle of it is this little gem:

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.

If I am reading this right, this bailout plan - which will transfer $700 billion taxpayer dollars to purchase the distressed assets of several failed financial institutions - will be conducted in a manner unchallengeable by courts and ungovernable by congress in any fashion. All decision-making power will be consolidated into the Executive Branch - who, as plain as day, will have the incentive to act upon this privilege as quickly as possible, before they leave office. The measure will run up the budget deficit by a significant amount, with no guarantee of recouping the outlay, and no fundamental means of holding those who fail to do so accountable.

That's outrageous! It includes no oversight for Paulson at all. He plans to retain Wall Street firms as advisors to decide just how to cut deals to value and mop up Wall Street's dubious paper. There are to be no limits on executive compensation for the firms that get relief, and no equity share for the government in exchange for this massive infusion of capital.

As Bloomberg said about the McBush policies: "Privatize the profits. Socialize the debt."

What's up with that? I simply don't get it and my college degree was in both Political Science and Economics. There is no other way around the fact that Section 8 of Paulson's plan is a singularly transformative sentence of economic policy. It transfers a significant amount of power to the Executive Branch, while walling off any avenue for oversight, and offering no guarantees in return. And if congress ends up content with winning a few slight concessions, they risk not putting a stop-payment on the real "blank check" - the one in which they allow the erosion of their own powers.

Scary stuff...