Dystopian Paradox

The New York Times reported that all the players in Washington are near an agreement on the terms of the $700 billion bailout.

Taxpayers will really being taking a hit if the fed is going to buy bad assets based on what those assets are suppose to pay the holder at maturity. That bails out Wall Street, at least to this point, totally at the taxpayers’ risk.

While the $700 million bailout debate in Washington goes on, the debate tomorrow evening may not. Obama held a press conference yesterday in Florida after a rally, in which he said that a president has to deal with more than one issue at a time and so he wants the Friday debate to happen. You can watch the whole press conference on YouTube.

Meanwhile, Congress yesterday overwhelmingly passed a $25 billion bailout of the automakers. This move was politcaly motivated because it directly affects jobs in swing states. This move would have been earth shaking news a year ago. Today it’s second page news.

In 1980, the CATO Institute called the Chrysler bailout a move toward feudalism. The Paulson plan as he proposed it is a giant step in turning the US of A into a feudalistic state. I’ll discuss the process in a subsequent post.