as skeptical as i was about the $700 billion bailout plan last fall, i was eventually convinced that some kind of action had to be taken by the federal government. i didn't like the bailout plan that passed, but at least the final version was an improvement over that three page piece of shit the bush administration originally proposed. you know, the one that let the treasury secretary do whatever he wanted with no accountability at all.
the final version was, at least, quite a bit longer. over 100 pages (i hear), if you bother to print it out. which i didn't. nor did i bother to read the whole thing. when i was blogging a lot about this, i was mostly reacting to the press reports.
through those reports, i did get the impression that the point of at least some of that extra verbiage was to add accountability to the process. i thought having the federal government buying troubled assets without taking an ownership stake in the financial institutions was a bad idea, but i believed it would at least insist the recipients disclose what they do with the taxpayers' money rather than just give them cash. remember all that press about including limits on executive compensation? surely, the whole point of all those extra pages in the final version were about public accountability for the money.
i guess i was wrong. apparently paulson had the authority to dispense money only on the condition that the institutions account for the money, but he decided not to. i don't know why i keep expecting the bush administration to not horribly botch everything it does. you'd think after eight years i would have learned by now.
