Thanks very much Ian.

digg

Thanks Ian, can’t WAIT to see the details . . . I sure could use a few hundred thousand, though, to help myself and family . . . and a few other friends and good folks who need it.

Know where I can apply? *G*

I hope we get either assets or equity for all of the money we put up, just like the Swedes did.

From the NYT

The bill includes pay limits for some executives whose firms seek help, aides said. And it requires the government to use its new role as owner of distressed mortgage-backed securities to make more aggressive efforts to prevent home foreclosures. In some cases, the government would receive an equity stake in companies that seek aid, allowing taxpayers to profit should the rescue plan work and the private firms flourish in the months and years ahead.

The White House also agreed to strict oversight of the program by a Congressional panel and conflict-of-interest rules for firms hired by the Treasury to help run the program. As they approached a final deal, both sides appeared to have given up a number of contentious proposals, including a change in the bankruptcy laws sought by some Democrats to give judges the authority to modify the terms of first mortgages.

I don’t know if we’ll know for sure until we see the real language. “In some cases” is a little weasel wordy for me to have a lot of confidence that we’ll get anything.

the whole article is worth a read.

…a bloodless coup has just occurred in the USA…

AP is reporting that King Paulson gets the first 350 billion up front. After that if Congress doesn’t like what he’s using it for they have to overcome a Bush veto to put the brakes on the second 350 million.

Congress leaders, White House reach tentative deal on $700 billion financial bailout deal

[…]

Money for the rescue plan would be phased in, he said. The first $350 billion would be available as soon as the president requested it. Congress could try to block later amounts if it believed the program was not working. The president could veto such a move, however, requiring extra large margins in the House and Senate to override.

[…]

Ian,

I was at Stanford this weekend and had a long talk yesterday with a friend who is one of the top academic financial economists in the United States. He has hnad several conversations with Paulson in the last ten days, and says that Paulson simply has a bee in his bonnet with respect to the bail-out as planned. The economics profession, right and left, favours the kind of bail-out that Warren Buffett pulled off last week: a combination of warrants, an equity stake and insurance. Odd that the pre-cambrian rethugs are the ones pushing this plan. Anyway, Paulson simply won’t hear anything of it. He seems to think that if the money isn’t given out independently of need (i.e. independently of the level of bad debts), it will strike of favoritism. Apparently this is the lesson he drew from the Japanese crisis some years back.

Anyway, Paulson’s position isn’t particularly ideological, as many of us suspected; it is personal. One of those random events that have cascading consequences.

Of course it’s personal …

http://www.counterpunch.org/rajiva09202008.html

Lila tells all.

The WaPoo has this…

Lawmakers Reach Accord on Huge Financial Rescue
House Expected to Vote Today on $700 Billion Bailout

…Democrats and Republicans from both chambers met with Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. through the afternoon in an effort to forge a compromise on a variety of outstanding issues, including how quickly the government should make money available for the program and whether participating firms should be required to limit executive pay.

Talks also focused on a new issue: how to cover the cost of the program so taxpayers don’t get stuck with the bill. […]

Yesterday, Democrats said they were pressing hard for further taxpayer protections, including a fee that would be imposed on the financial services industry if after five years the government had not fully recouped its money. The proposal, which did not surface in negotiations until yesterday, would help win the support of a fiscally conservative group of House Democrats known as the Blue Dogs, an important bloc of 47 votes.

“We believe that the taxpayer should not be left holding the bag at the end of the day, and we’ve proposed a way to address that,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a member of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership team.

Tinkerbell RULEZZ bitches. Don’t fuck with her or she’ll mess you up.

Insurance is potentially a good idea, but the details matter and the Republican plan (as I understand it) was brain dead. Other than that, more or less agreed.

What really boggles the mind is how badly Dems got played. They are such schmucks. Unbelievable.

What really boggles the mind is how badly Dems got played.

Or bought.