Ample opportunity

"We must act now to protect our nation's economic health from serious risk," Bush said at a White House press conference. "There will be ample opportunity to discuss the origins of this problems. Now is the time to solve it."

I guess maybe there will be ample opportunity to discuss the nature of this problem as well, but not until we've passed a law banishing inconvenient mathematics to the furthest ends of the cosmos. Given the indisputable fact that, as another article notes, "The effort is a recognition that Paulson's and Bernanke's earlier efforts failed to revive financial and housing markets," I do not see a single reason to believe this one will cure a disease that has been purposely misdiagnosed from the start. But I do see plenty of room for a poorly-thought-out imposition of martial law on the markets to have very bad unintended consequences.

Two interesting lines in the draft proposal that ought to make every sane person's blood run cold:

Sec. 8. Review.

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...

Sec. 10. Increase in Statutory Limit on the Public Debt.

Subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31, United States Code, is amended by striking out the dollar limitation contained in such subsection and inserting in lieu thereof $11,315,000,000,000.

Our Democrat Congress*, sworn enemies of Smirky McBushitlerchimpco™ (or whatever their Legion of the Least Clever minions call him) and all that he stands for, and defenders of the middle class from the predations of greedy Wall Street privateers**, are falling all over themselves to give Bush's Secretary of the Pirate Booty Treasury, the billionaire former Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, unreviewable authority to spend a trillion dollars buying from his friends assets that they don't want anymore, before he leaves the government in 6 months.

In what bizarro world does this farce not write "National Bankruptcy" in fiery capital letters across the midnight sky?

* Even Obama is on the bandwagon: "I fully support the efforts of Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke to work in a bipartisan spirit with Congress to find a solution of this sort. What we're looking at right now is to provide the Treasury and the Federal Reserve with as broad authority as is necessary to stabilize markets and to maintain credit."

** And defenders of the poor from all who oppress them by offering them jobs.