Paulson: And by "black" I of course meant "white"

Here's an excerpt from the bailout plan Henry Paulson has been demanding that Congress pass as soon as humanly possible:

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.

And here's Paulson "explaining" what he really meant by this:

We gave you a simple three-page legislative outline, and I thought it would have been presumptuous for us on that outline to come up with an oversight mechanism. That’s the role of Congress. That’s something we’re going to work on together. So if any of you felt that I didn’t believe that we needed oversight, I believe we need oversight. We need oversight. We need protection. We need transparency. I want it. We all want it.

Paulson then proceeded to piss in a glass and offer it to the Senators as cool, refreshing lemonade.

Comments

[cemmcs]

The $700 billion may be a little high. Actually, once the oil starts flowing again, the bailout will pay for itself. I predict people on Wall Street will greet us as liberators!

[John Caruso]

Nice.

[steve]

John-

Actually, we have no earthly idea how high the price of this gift might go. The proposal itself says:

Sec. 6. Maximum Amount of Authorized Purchases.

The Secretary’s authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time

"At any one time" -- that implies that there are an undetermined number of 700 trillion dollar payments possible...