SNL on the Stress Test

Everytime I try to embed this hysterical SNL video my internet explorer gets cut off. Is there a reason for this?

Those are some of Citi's answers to Part Two of the government's stress test, the written portion, which the Big C apparently thought was "just a big joke." Here are some other questions and answers from the examination administered last Saturday, as obtained by SNL.
* In the event of a nationwide run on the banks, how much in total cash assets does your bank have on hand to pay depositors?
Bank of America wrote: "not enough that's for sure."
Citi wrote: "Geithner sucks."
GMAC wrote: "taxpayer bailout."
* Given their historic under-representation in banking, women should be encouraged to enter the field as long as they are ______. (the correct answer was "as long as they are qualified.")
Morgan Stanley wrote: "as long as they are doable."
Bank of NY Mellon wrote: "immediate family members."
Citi wrote: "Hey Geithner, we've got a job for your mother."

You can get the link from Dealbreaker

Executive Travel The JP Morgan Way

Admit it...you so wanted to read this

JPMorgan Chase To Spend Millions on New Jets and Luxury Airport Hangar

Here's the link to the video from ABC.com

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7148056

So...let's get this straight

JP Morgan already has 2 corporate jets and now they are upgrading to 2 new ultra luxurious jets and possibly the finest private hanger with a roof garden to house the new rolling stock...or should we call it flying stock.

The financial giant's upgrade includes nearly $120 million for two Gulfstream 650 planes and $18 million for a lavish renovation of a hangar at the Westchester Airport outside New York City.

According to JPMorgan Chase architects, the new hangar will be built with reclaimed wood, quarry tile and even a "vegetated roof garden."
The Gulfstream 650's are described by the manufacturer as the "fastest," "widest" and "most comfortable" private jet ever with superior cabin amenities, an optional stateroom, and 12 interior designs to choose from.

Do I need to remind any of you of the fact that JP Morgan has received 25 Billion TARP money.

Vintage Value Venture - Because I Didn't Get Any AIG Bonus Bucks

Every week I read the news and shake my head about the massive screw-ups coming out of Washington.

...AIG bonuses paid by the taxpayers and then our friends over at Fannie and Freddie reaching out for taxpayer backed bonuses too.

Of course we have the usual suspects complaining about limits on bonuses

Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Criticize Limits

Next we have this

Blogger Amy Alkon reminds us of even more nonsense from Capital Hill.

Bend Over, America!

(Again.) Guess who owes us back taxes? Matt Jaffe writes on ABC News that at least 13 companies who've sucked up some of the $300 billion in TARP funds owe hundreds of millions of dollars in back taxes:
Two of the companies owe more than $100 million in taxes, said Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight.
Altogether, the 13 companies owed the government more than $220 million in unpaid taxes, he said.

No wonder we had the largest weekly drop in the dollar since 1985.

Thank God for Vintage...because I'm assuming that you didn't get government backed bonus bucks this year either.

OK, so it's not Roland Mouret....but I like the Mad Men 1950's vibe and detail. Plus the emphasis on the shoulders fits with everything shown this year at New York Fashion Week.

1950's Black and Blue Silk Dress from Swank Vintage $200

Dress Detail - Note blue interior at neckline

Rhonda Faber Green Sapphire and Diamond Earrings from Beladora.com $3250

Sapphire and Diamond Ring from Beladora.com $1950

Yeah...I know that the jewelry is on the pricey side...but with the dollar going down and gold going up...not to mention the inevitable inflation that will be coming our way soon...I'd rather have my assets invested in estate jewelry than in the stock market.

Countdown To Valentine's Day - For The Boys

Serious times call for serious clothes...so here's my suggestion for a Valentine's Day gift for your guy.

Today's DJIA

Harry Winston Cufflinks $1850 fromk Beladora.com

Ferragamo Dress Shirt From Neiman Marcus $295

Because now is the time to dress like you mean business.

I'll Have An Order Of The Pork Please

Washington DC...all pork all the time!

You've got to love it.

H/T Althouse via instapundit

I Just Thought You Should Know

From Bloomberg.com
U.S. Taxpayers Risk $9.7 Trillion on Bailouts as Senate Votes

“We’ve seen money go out the back door of this government unlike any time in the history of our country,” Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said on the Senate floor Feb. 3. “Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose. How much from the FDIC? How much from TARP? When? Why?”

The remaining $8 trillion in commitments are lending programs and guarantees, almost all under the authority of the Fed and the FDIC. The recipients’ names have not been disclosed.

The promises are composed of about $1 trillion in stimulus packages, around $3 trillion in lending and spending and $5.7 trillion in agreements to provide aid.

So how much money is this really?

The $9.7 trillion in pledges would be enough to send a $1,430 check to every man, woman and child alive in the world. It’s 13 times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office data, and is almost enough to pay off every home mortgage loan in the U.S., calculated at $10.5 trillion by the Federal Reserve.

The chart that I posted above isn't really clear, so I'll just give you the gist.

The amount of the bailout is more than the sum of

The Louisiana Purchase

The New Deal

The Marshal Plan

The Korean War

The Vietnam War

The Moonshot

The Iraq War

The S&L Crisis

The NASA Space Program

In other words, it's a lot of f*#king money

Shouldn't we know where it is going?

The Federal Reserve so far is refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in return. Collateral is an asset pledged by a borrower in the event a loan payment isn’t made.

So much for transparency

Bailout Boondoggles

Every year at tax season I get to wondering about where it is that all my tax dollars go....

Here are some of the Bailout Boondoggles that you and I have paid for.

1. The Golden Parachute

Peter Kraus joined Merrill Lynch in early September to head up its strategy team. But Bank of America, bolstered by $25 billion in bailout money, won shareholder approval this month to take over Merrill. The deal will trigger a golden-parachute clause in Kraus' contract, allowing him to pocket as much as $25 million for his two months on the job, according to The Wall Street Journal.

2. Executive Retention

Should taxpayers pay to keep executives who steered a company into a ditch? American International Group thinks so. It recently agreed to pay retention bonuses to 130 executives, including $3 million for Jay Wintrob, who heads the division that sells annuities. Last year, he earned $2.5 million in salary, bonus, stock and options. Other AIG execs will get more than $500,000, or about 200% of their salaries, to stay through 2009, according to Bloomberg. The insurer had previously promised to forgo bonus payouts as part of the bailout plan. AIG says retention bonuses are needed to keep execs from leaving while it restructures and that departures could cause the company's reinsurers to cancel contracts.

3. Executive Compensation

As millions of Americans learn what it's like to make ends meet on unemployment insurance, executives at banks getting taxpayer bailouts will continue to live the high life. Capital One Financial CEO Richard Fairbanks got $73.1 million in pay last year, according to The Corporate Library. That's 1,456 times the median household income of $50,233 earned by taxpayers footing the bill for Capital One's $3.55 billion federal bailout. Bank of America chief Kenneth Lewis last year took home $23 million, or 458 times the income earned by taxpayers covering his bank's $25 billion bailout. Both CEOs also make way more than the median of $8.85 million for CEOs at S&P 500 companies. Despite having to lean on taxpayers with modest incomes for help, both CEOs will likely continue to earn stratospheric pay. Neither bank has indicated it plans to cut CEO pay.

4. The Corporate Jet For Personal Use

While hard times are forcing many Americans to stretch another year out of the family jalopy, the CEOs at banks getting bailout money will continue to ride -- and fly -- high. John Mack . who heads Morgan Stanley, which has taken $10 billion in bailout money so far, enjoyed $356,000 worth of personal use of a corporate jet last year. JPMorgan Chase has gotten $25 billion in bailout money. Its chief, James Dimon, took $211 million worth of use of a company jet last year. He used company cars at an estimated cost of $68,000. So far, neither company has indicated it will cut back on CEOs' personal use of corporate jets as part of its acceptance of taxpayer bailout money.

5. Mergers and Acquisitions

Many banks are playing "Let's Make a Deal" and building empires with bailout money, instead of using it to make loans that help the economy. Shortly after PNC Financial Services got a $7.7 billion cash injection, it announced a buyout of National City. BB&T and Zions Bancorporation have said they have the urge to merge -- now that they've collectively pocketed $4.5 billion in bailout funds. Bigger banks mean less competition and higher fees for the taxpayers who helped fund these deals. And the mergers have created more banks that are "too big to fail" -- so when they come back for more money, it'll be even harder to say no. BB&T says it would buy only "problem" banks, in the spirit of the bailout program.

6. And More Golden Parachutes

Cleveland's National City bank was run so badly that it was virtually ruined, mainly by imprudent exposure to subprime mortgages. Management's reward for creating this colossal disaster: $200 million in golden parachutes. And taxpayers will get fleeced a second time. Because of a last-minute change in tax rules, PNC Financial Services, which bought National City, will get about $725 million in income-tax credits. Those credits stem from the $19.9 billion PNC expects to lose on bad loans made by National City.

On the positive side....now I know that there's quite a nice list of potential clients for 2009...John Mack, Jamie Dimon, Richard Fairbanks, Kenneth Lewis, Peter Kraus and their bailout buddies!!!

Multi-Cultural Business Conference Brought To You By Citibank and a $545 Bikini

So many serious issues....so little time.
Let's just hope that you were invited to the
Caribbean Multi-Cultural Business Conference
to discuss substantive issues of the day
with leaders from Congress and Wall Street.
And yes...thank you Citibank - aka bailout recipient -
for picking up the check.

So your wardrobe for the meeting
a Stella McCartney bikini of course from Neiman Marcus for a mere $545.
Because let's face it... you have to look your best to discuss
Multi-Cultural business issues!

Wall Street- Capital Hill vs Main Street

h/t Instapundit

They just don't get it do they?

* Citigroup, recipient of some $45 billion of taxpayer funds, was blithely going about the purchase a $50 million private jet until the deal became public. Even then, the widespread public outrage didn't phase the high-fliers - but an apparent call from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner did. Citi meekly cancelled the purchase.
* As former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain was agreeing to resign from Bank of America - and the newly-merged bank was requesting more government aid - it came to light that Thain had recently spent $1 million redecorating his office ($800,000 for a celebrity designer) and had doled out $4 billion in executive bonuses to favored Merrill employees just before the merger - some of the people who had driven the company in collapse and had helped it lose $15.3 billion in 2008.
* Speaking of bonuses for failure, the brokerage units along Wall Street lost more than $35 billion last year - and doled out an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses.

But it's not just Wall Street

Capital Hill is in collusion too...

The same prescription can be written for Congress, where bad habits also abound.
New York's Charles Rangel and five other Democratic members of the House enjoyed a trip to the Caribbean sponsored in part by Citigroup (see above) in November - after Congress had approved the $700 bailout for financial firms (including Citigroup).
The members no doubt will object to the terms "junket," but that shoe fits. The National Legal and Policy Center, a watchdog group, has asked Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to investigate the Nov. 6-9 excursion to the island of St. Maarten.
It was called the Caribbean Multi-Cultural Business Conference, but "the primary purpose ... for most participants appeared to be to take a vacation," said the NLPC. And not only was the timing lousy, but "corporate sponsorship of such an event was banned by House rules adopted on March 1, 2007, in response to the (lobbyist Jack) Abramoff scandal," the group pointed out.

God...I would so love a vacation in the sun.
How do I get invited to one of those Caribbean Multi-Cultural Business Conferences???

Spreading The Wealth Around - Christmas Comes Early On Capital Hill

Are you going to vote yourself a raise this year?

From Roger's Rules

The sotto voce announcement that Congress, after
wagging their collective head over executive pay and perks, decided to vote
itself a $2.5 million raise was a depressing portent. “With economy in
shambles,” read a headline in The Hill,
“Congress gets a raise.”
A crumbling economy, more than 2 million
constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of
CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.
PR-wise, this should be a
Car-execs-take-private-jets-to-Washington-to-ask-for-taxpayer-bailout moment.
So where, as Bob Dole memorably asked, is the outrage?
Don’t hold your breath. What makes this
Congress-takes-some-more-money-from-your-pocket-and-puts-it-into-theirs scenario
so depressing is that people seem to have given up holding our duly-elected
representative accountable for anything short of outright peculation.
And to listen to Rod Blagojevich try to to brazen it out, even flagrant
corruption may turn out to OK.

And here's the best comment on this article.

“larger and larger swathes of the U.S. economy has been colonized by the federal government” (Roger)

Does this not justify their pay increase? They are taking more responsibilities - running banks,housing finance institutions, auto industry, trying to control the world’s weather patterns….
I get exhausted just thinking of all the wonderful stuff they do.

Setting The Standard - Focus On Ford

According to Yahoo news, Ford CEO Alan Mulally will work for $1 per year if the company has to resort to a government loan...aka a bailout.

After grilling the CEOs at hearings last month, Congressional leaders demanded plans from the automakers by Tuesday to show that they will survive if they get federal funds. The plan Ford submitted said the company will cancel all management employees' 2009 bonuses and will not pay any merit increases for its North American salaried employees next year.
The company also said it will sell its five corporate aircraft. The CEOs of all three Detroit automakers were harshly criticized during last month's hearings for flying to Washington in separate corporate jets.

This is a good start and I expect the CEOs of every other firm that has taken a bailout package to do the same.

Citigroup - Banking on a Bailout

Citigroup 1977-2008

Citigroup has the farthest international reach of any U.S. bank, with operations in more than 100 countries. The bank was widely felt to be too big to be allowed to fail.

The plan calls for Citigroup, America's second-biggest bank, to issue $27 billion in preferred shares to the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The Fed, Treasury and FDIC in return will shoulder most of the potential losses on Citigroup's $306 billion portfolio of debt assets, beyond an initial $29 billion in losses which Citigroup would be responsible for.

Even after everything that has happened in the last few months this blows me away.

Long ago when I worked for Citigroup which was headed at the time by Sandy Weill, it was like working at GE under Jack Welch, demanding but rewarding. There was something truly special about working for a firm where everyone around me had the patina of the best and the brightest.

I wonder how many Citigroup employees will lose their jobs because of the mismanagement at the executive level.

Big 3 Bailout or When First Class Isn't Good Enough

From ABCnews.com
Big Three CEOs Flew Private Jets to Plead for Public Funds
Auto Industry Close to Bankruptcy But They Get Pricey Perk

All three CEOs - Rick Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler - exercised their perks Tuesday by flying in corporate jets to DC. Wagoner flew in GM's $36 million luxury aircraft to tell members of Congress that the company is burning through cash, asking for $10-12 billion for GM alone.

"This is a slap in the face of taxpayers," said Tom Schatz, President of Citizens Against Government Waste. "To come to Washington on a corporate jet, and asking for a hand out is outrageous."

Wagoner's private jet trip to Washington cost his ailing company an estimated $20,000 roundtrip. In comparison, seats on Northwest Airlines flight 2364 from Detroit to Washington were going online for $288 coach and $837 first class.

Ford CEO Mulally's corporate jet is a perk included for both he and his wife as part of his employment contract along with a $28 million salary last year. Mulally actually lives in Seattle, not Detroit. The company jet takes him home and back on weekends.

I just thought you might want to know.

Bailout? What Bailout? No Wall Street Woes For Investment Bankers

I've been worrying day and night about this...
Drudge just linked to a report from CBS news online today which reported that in spite of the uncertain economy, Investment Bankers from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and other Wall Street firms are still going to get their hefty bonuses! Thank God!
And I'm sure that none of this money could possibly come from the taxpayer funded Bailout Bucks.
Right?

Remember

The bailout package specifies that the top five executives of a company cannot get a golden parachute, but doesn't limit compensation for any other employees. Some observers, such as financial expert and reporter Stephen Gandel, say bonuses are expected to be down, but not as much as they might have been without the bailout.

According to a report from financial news agency Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs, for example, has set aside $6.8 billion for bonuses, and Morgan Stanley, $6.4 billion.

One woman in New York's financial district remarked to David, "You have people losing their houses, people on the street, they can't feed themselves, while these people are just banking on (their bonuses)."

Overall, David says, there's secrecy around how the hundreds of billions of bailout dollars are being used. The Federal Reserve Board has refused to say which banks are getting how much of the pie. And now Bloomberg is actually suing the Fed to get that information.

Two Months Of Fun With The Fed!

How did a $700 billion dollar bailout package turn into $2 trillion dollars in taxpayer funded loans?

Fed Defies Transparency Aim in Refusal to Identify Bank Loans

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of
emergency loans from American taxpayers or the
troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in
return.

GM Volt - What took Detroit so long to come out with an new electric car?

Meanwhile, the Detroit Big Three, which avoided building fuel efficient cars and still can get an electric car to the market until 2010, is asking the taxpayers for their share of the pie too.

This letter by a Mr. Horsburgh to the Wall Street Journal lays out the problem.

Regarding your editorial "Dining at the Taxpayer Buffet" (Oct. 31): Representatives of the Detroit Big Three met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to request $25 billion more in taxpayer money. They've already received commitments for $25
billion from taxpayers to modernize their facilities. Now they want more to pay into the UAW retiree health-care trust. Even this isn't enough as they are apparently also looking for access to the Federal Reserve discount window, a privilege reserved for banks.

Let's see if there are any politicians who can read a
balance sheet and stand up for the American taxpayer. The Big Three claim that the credit crunch and economic downturn suddenly and unexpectedly caused their financial reversal, but their problems have been decades in the making and were obvious before the current credit crunch. As of the end of this year's second quarter, a quarter in which the economy grew at around its typical rate, GM had a negative net worth of $57 billion. It had assets of $137 billion, owed $67 billion to suppliers and for payroll, $44 billion to banks and bondholders, $59 billion in retiree claims and $21 billion to "other." How is it not insolvent to have $191 billion in debts backed by only $137 billion in assets? GM's financial position isdeteriorating rapidly, hemorrhaging cash to the tune of at least $1 billion
per month.

How much taxpayer cash should be injected into supporting a company that needs at least $57 billion just to even out its assets and debts? Why should taxpayers bail out Big Three stockholders and Cerberus, the private equity holders controlling Chrysler and GMAC? Why should 140 million taxpayers be forced to pay for the retiree health benefits of just 300,000 people?

A lot has happened in the last two months.

Going John Galt?

Bailouts and Bankruptcies
Economics and Earmarks
Volatility and Valuations
Commodity Prices and Credit Spreads
Markets and Mortgages
Derivatives and the Dow

So much to worry about...

Dr. Helen asks "Is it time to go John Galt?"

Do you ever wonder after dealing with all that is going on with the economy and the upcoming election if it's getting to be time to "go John Galt." For those of you who have never read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, the basic theme is that John Galt and his allies take actions that include withdrawing their talents, 'stopping the motor of the world', and leading the 'strikers' (those who refuse to be exploited) against the 'looters' (the exploiters, backed by the government).

Since I tend to be a "glass half full" person I'm not ready to go to Galt's Gulch.

Claudia Rosett from her Forbes.com article Counting America's Successes writes

And yet, despite the drum roll of crises above, America over the years has found ways not only to cope but to lead the world into an era of extraordinary opportunity and progress.

Let's hope that she's right.

What's Cooking in Washington - A Recipe For Ruin

I find Ben Stein to be way out there when it comes to subject of science but with it comes to
How to Ruin the Economy he is spot on.

Here's his Recipe for Ruin

1) Have a fiscal policy that creates immense deficits in good times and bad, burdening America's posterity with staggering burdens of repaying the debt.

2) Eliminate regulation of Wall Street and/or fail to enforce the regulations that already exist, instead trusting Wall Street and other money managers and speculators to manage other people's money with few or no regulations and little oversight.

3) Have an energy policy that disallows producing our own energy and instead requires that we buy energy from abroad, thus making our oil prices highly volatile and creating large balance of payments deficits, lowering the value of the dollar and thus making the problem get progressively worse.

4) Have Congress mandate that banks and other financial entities lend money to persons they know in advance to have poor credit ratings or none at all.

5) Allow investment banks, insurers, and banks to bet their entire net worth and then some on the premise that borrowers known to be improvident will in fact repay those loans.

6) Allow the creation of large betting pools called "hedge funds" that can move markets and control the outcome of trading, thus taking a forum for savings and retirement for families and making it into a rigged casino game that exists primarily to fleece suckers like ordinary working men and women.

7) Have laws that protect corporate officers from being sued for misconduct but at the same time punish lawyers in the private sector who ferret out such misconduct and try to make accountable the people responsible for shareholder and investor losses. If one of those lawyers gets particularly aggressive in protecting stockholders, put him in prison.

8) Appoint as head of the United States Treasury Department a man whose whole life was spent on Wall Street, who became fantastically rich through his peddling of junk bonds at his firm while the firm later sold short those same sorts of bonds.

9) Scare Americans into putting up $750 billion of their hard earned money to bail out the billionaires and their friends who created the market for loans to poor credit risks (The "subprime" market) and the unbelievably large side bets on those loans, promising that such a bailout would save the retirement savings of Americans, then allow the immense hedge funds to make the market crater immediately afterwards.

10) Propose to save the situation by surtaxing the oil industry, which is owned by our fellow Americans, mostly in their retirement plans, thus penalizing Americans for investing in companies that efficiently and legally produce an indispensable product.

11) Insist that the free market requires that banks and insurers with friends of the Secretary of the Treasury be saved but allow other entities not so fortunate to fail, thus creating total uncertainty and terror among financial institutions, and demolishing all of the confidence built up in financial circles since the days of FDR.

12) Then have the Republican candidate say he would keep on the job the Treasury Secretary who facilitated the crisis, failed to protect the nation from the crisis, got the taxpayers to pony up to save his Wall Street buddies, and have the Democratic candidate, as noted, say he would save the day by taxing the stockholders of energy companies.

There, that should do it.

Indeed

Banquets and Beauty Treatments with your Bailout

Just when I wanted to post something about about the new app for your iphone that will bring you photos of the latest runway fashions from Style.com...I had to come across this charming little piece of news.


WASHINGTON (AP) - Less than a week after the federal government had to bail out American International Group Inc. (AIG), the company sent executives on a $440,000 retreat to a posh California resort, lawmakers investigating the company's meltdown said Tuesday.
The tab included $23,380 worth of spa treatments for AIG employees at the coastal St. Regis resort south of Los Angeles even as the company tapped into an $85 billion loan from the government it needed to stave off bankruptcy.

St Regis Resort - Monarch Beach, CA

So while we are working away at our day jobs trying to forecast what the next year is going to look like as a result of the financial crisis, the executives at AIG are getting spa treatments.

You can view the St. Regis bill for AIG here.
It is just me or does this seem like something out of a Tom Wolfe novel?

Bailout Balderdash

So a 3 page bill aimed at bringing some measure of immediate relief for the mortgage crisis and the banks that speculated on so much bad credit has now turned into a 422 page barrage of BS.

I'm not surprised that this Bailout Bill has turned into another Government Boondoggle.
Are you?

This bill, now signed into law, includes
from Cnet

millions in tax breaks and related pork for kids' wooden arrows, Puerto Rican rum producers, auto race tracks, and corporations operating in American Samoa. (The likely explanation for the latter: StarKist has a large tuna-canning operation in American Samoa. And StarKist's parent company happens to be located in the district of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.)

The bailout bill also gives the Internal Revenue Service new authority to conduct undercover operations. It would immunize the IRS from a passel of federal laws, including permitting IRS agents to run businesses for an extended sting operation, to open their own personal bank accounts with U.S. tax dollars, and so on. (Think IRS agents posing as accountants or tax preparers and saying, "I'm not sure if that deduction is entirely legal, but it'll save you $1,000. Want to take it?") That section had expired as of January 1, 2008, and would now be renewed.

There are also some Green - Tech measures in this bill that I don't necessarily disagree with...but they don't belong in this particular bill at this particular time.

The bill has become, in other words, something almost unrelated to the business of bailing out Wall Street. The Beltway term for this is a "Christmas tree bill," meaning everyone gets to hang their favorite spending projects on it--though by the time Congress gets it through, it more closely resembles a slop bucket.

And what about the potential loopholes?

Some loopholes exist. It's possible for a bank to buy $100 billion of bad debt--perhaps in the form of subprime mortgages that are becoming quickly worthless-- declare bankruptcy, and sell it to the Treasury Department for $120 billion, or $200 billion. In other words, although the Treasury Department is supposed to look out for the best interests of taxpayers, there's no law forbidding such profits in the case of firms involved in bankruptcy, receivership, or mergers.

Section 115 of the law says that the administration can, after notifying Congress and waiting 15 days, purchase and hold $700 billion of assets "at any one time." (It can buy and hold $350 billion without waiting.)
This, too, is a potential loophole. It permits the Treasury Department to buy up, say, $700 billion in 2008, sell those assets off gradually over the next year at a (probable) loss, and repeat the same process in 2009. Losses to taxpayers, in other words, could exceed $700 billion. Although the Treasury Department is instructed to try to avoid losses, yeah whatever...the text of the law does not forbid that scenario.

Now onto my basic bugbear: Executive Compensation
Section 111 is titled "Executive Compensation and Corporate Governance."
It does not include, however, any statutory dollar limit on how high executive salaries of TARP bailout recipients can be. Instead, it lets Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, come up with "appropriate standards." In addition, only the top five executives will have their golden parachutes limited; all the rest will remain untouched, even if their second-tier salaries and bonuses happen to be in the millions or tens of millions of dollars.

Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne made $61.3 million from selling his shares a day after the JP Morgan bailout. Daniel Mudd, CEO of Fannie Mae, was replaced last month; he made $11.6 million in 2007. Richard Syron was chairman and CEO of Freddie Mac from 2003 until last month. He made $19.8 million last year. Martin Sullivan was ousted as president and CEO of AIG this summer, and was paid a $47 million severance package.

Pigs at the trough indeed