Here are some of the thoughts going through my mind as this financial crisis obtains (and which is giving a whole new meaning to the phrase “Wall Street bull”):
· I am reminded of nothing so much as the run-up to the Iraq war, when we were stampeded by dire predictions and images of “mushroom clouds.” The "boy who cried wolf" keeps coming to mind.
· This is the administration that has signed on to the idea of “reducing” the Federal government to a size where they can “drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” What better way to do that than to bankrupt it?
· Aren’t the people who are "fixing this" the same people who got us into the mess in the first place?
· I sure as hell don’t think any of the executives who drove these institutions into the ditch should get anything like a Golden Parachute as they go out the door. In fact, I think there ought to be a decidedly punitive aspect to this (for them), and hundreds of these greedy, grabby, dishonest and disingenuous people ought to pay back some of the money they got on the way into the ditch.
- Who is looking out for the interests of the taxpayers? Perhaps the solution ought to be finding a way to help the people who were swindled, not the swindlers? And make no mistake about it…this was a swindle. Lies were told. Deceit was perpetrated.
- "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." Right. Because "no accountability and lack of transparency" has worked so well this far. This is the Financial Patriot Act.