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The mother of all rip-offs

George W has today described the US in "severe financial crisis." He is pleading for swift action by Congress to agree to his Treasury Secretary's "salvage" package of a mere US$700 billion. Needless to say there is substantial resistance to the proposal as it seems like the Gordon Geckos of Wall St. will walk away with millions of dollars whilst the taxpayers pick up the tab for what has occurred and to keep the economy from tanking.

Michael West, writing in The Age, puts into context what Treasury Secretary Paulson is trying to pull off here - and what West rightly describes as the mother of all rip-offs:

"Hank Paulson has got to be kidding. He wants American taxpayers to hand a cool $US700 billion ($840 billion) to his pals on Wall Street in return for a gigantic bundle of their delinquent assets ... without his pals taking a pay cut.

Could there be a finer reward for failure? Could there be a worse deal for taxpayers?

No stake in the upside, no ceiling on extortionate Wall Street salaries, no guarantee the system will be stabilised. Just the mother of all rip-offs: a deal to privatise Wall Street's profits and socialise its losses.

How about this bit: "Decisions by the (Treasury) Secretary (Paulson) 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''.

Paulson and his pals get an explicit protection against any review by the courts and Congress while taxpayers fork out top dollar for rubbish the banks can't sell. It is the quintessential dudding."

Continue to read the complete piece here - and reflect on the vast sums paid, and probably to be paid, to those Gordon Geckos.

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