The hits just keep on coming

It's always a nice feeling when you click over to Huffington Post in the morning and get to read the words "MASSIVE BAILOUT" in giant blood red letters. I guess this financial crisis will do one thing: make Iraq seem cheap in comparison. So bend over.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Friday sketched the outlines of a bold approach to confront the nation's financial crisis. "We're talking hundreds of billions" of dollars, he said.

Paulson said he would work through the weekend with congressional leaders to reach agreement on a plan that would address the root problems of the financial crisis gripping the country.

"This needs to be big enough to make a real difference and get to the heart of the problem," he told reporters at the Treasury Department.

Paulson said that the new troubled-asset relief program that he wants Congress to enact must be large enough to have the necessary effect while protecting taxpayers as much as possible.

And how do you protect the taxpayer? By putting it on the hook for billions in worthless mortgages and mortgage backed securities. Here's a hint Harry, if they were worth a tinker's cuss the global financial markets wouldn't be fucked sideways. Plus you actually said out loud that you want to address the root problems of the financial crisis. The root problem is Wall Street and our oversight. You and your buddies hate the 'o' word. 'Oversight', not 'our'.

Wall Street, in their greed as is their way, tried every crooked way under the sun to make a buck. That included most of the shady, dimwitted shit that we're forking over billions for while they writhe around on the floor like a pathetic, thousand foot wino. The way to combat Wall Street's natural tendency to suck any knob for a nickel is with regulation, laws, and consequences. We're in the process of throwing the consequences out the window, but only after gutting the laws that were preventing this exact scenario in the first place. Who knew barriers between institutions were a good thing? Glass-Steagall that's who.

The first thing that would be nice is to restore some of those laws, like say destroying anything with Phil Gramm's name in it. Pile them all up and burn them, with or without Phil sitting on it. Then gather all the financial execs in the room and beat one to death with a bat while talking about responsibility. Like in Untouchables.

Free money doesn't teach them anything other than to ask for more free money. They aren't listening when you pat them on the head and tell them not to do it again. With the $50 billion pledged today to back money market mutual funds we are currently running at just a bit over $600 billion pledged in the past year to bail out the slow children who stuck their dicks in the pencil sharpener and are surprised by the resulting bloodbath. Furthermore, even after this $600 billion had been pledged, Paulson and Bernanke are still talking about "...crafting a massive rescue plan to buy up dodgy assets held by troubled banks and other financial institutions at the heart of the nation's financial crisis."

That'll be coming down the pike possibly as early as today. Unclench. It'll be easier to take when the new bailouts come speeding in at mach 2.