Sep 22, 08 08:39 pm — The mortgage bail-out plan Paulsen has proposed has been posted on the net. Check out the wording of section 8. If I saw language like that when buying a car, I would walk. I feel like Wall Street is this bully gambler on a losing streak rolling me for what little change he didn't get off me the last time he mugged me...
Here is another article about it on the Huffington post. I really hope we don't bow down to the urgent cry "We need your money to throw down this hole we dug", and we put some controls in place to prevent this kind of thing from happening.
I like Christopher Dodds plan, it doesn't leave the foxes guarding the hen house.
I suspect section 8 simply means that you can't impede any individual decision as inappropriate simply by filing lawsuit or getting a buddy in an agency to raise a stink. If that were permitted, you could use such tools to manipulate stock prices and short the hell out of a company, or deliberately engineer failure of a competitor in order to cherry pick assets at bankrupty.
So basically, you have to take the whole thing to court, or go to congress.
You do NOT want this system to be easily gamed.
Still, it is poory worded, and likely will never even hit comittee in that form. I severely doubt it would leave comittee like that if it did.
ETA: this is definitely the kind of thing where we need 2-3 different versions htting both house and senate so that proper negotiation and compromise can occur. Even well intentioned legislation is going to need to be well considered, and nothing does that quite as well as competition. I'm galdd to see the dodd bill is out there.
[Comment was edited by raz-00 on September 23, 2008 at 01:30:27 PM]
Very well said, raz-00. Thanks for making some sense of this.
This Section 8 stuff, whatever its intention, just reminds the public that Bush takes advantage of every disaster that comes our way to grab more executive power and get control of more taxpayer money to blow with no accountability.
I dunno, maybe Paulson means well, but this really really looks bad.
Dodd, the chairman of the housing and banking committee, is writing a plan on oversight?!? HAHAH!!!
It damn well better include his resignation, and a criminal indictment of himself. Followed swiftly by his counter-part in the House, Barney Frank, then Paulson, and finally Bernanke. Oh yeah, and then let the real blood-bath begin.
I could live with that if Paulson, Gramm, McCain, and all the others on your side (the side that has been running things the past 8 years) are to be treated the same way.
"...and all the others on your side (the side that has been running things the past 8 years)
My side? I thought I have always been fairly reasonable with my disagreements with your incredibly one-sided, myopic, Olbermann-induced opinions/delusions. I stopped taking you remotely seriously years ago.
I don't have a side. I am a proud Independent.
I want to see congressional investigations, a la "big oil", Enron, and the Bush Administration.
Face the problem, Gramps: it isn't Wall Street, and it isn't W. If it is, indict!!!!!
If government shouldn't get into the health care industry, why does it have to get into the banking industry?
Oh, politicians...... 
I'm sure all of you here know that just because that language exists in the legislation doesn't mean that the decisions can't be reviewed by the federal courts. The courts already exercise discretion when reviewing agency decisions; most of the time, courts defer to the agency's decision, but sometimes they don't. The courts give deference to the FDA when it comes to food safety. It's rare that a court will intervene in an agency's sphere of influence, but it does happen.
Likewise in this case, the supreme court can intervene if a case is brought before it to challenge the constitutionality of section 8 (I've never seen such a disclaimer in legislation like this, but I'm sure it happens a lot).
It takes a lot of balls and utter disregard for our constitution to insert such language into legislation.
[Comment was edited by TheNationalist on September 24, 2008 at 07:45:37 AM]
Gramps
So much for the separation of powers.