You won't be surprised to learn of even more change you can't believe in.

Meet the newest addition to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. If you've been reading Mother Jones recently, then you already know quite a bit about Scott O'Malia. Like the fact that he once worked as a top in-house lobbyist for an energy company, Mirant, that manipulated California's market Enron-style. Or that, while on this company's payroll, he lobbied against a bill to expand the CFTC's authority to police derivatives. Or that the Senate Agriculture Committee, which reviewed his nomination, declined to ask him any specific questions about his pro-deregulation lobbying on not one but two occasions.

It's a bust out, quite literally, supported by your bailout dollars:*

"Executives at Schwing said its primary lender, Wells Fargo & Co., began tightening terms a year ago, after its three-year loan agreement with the company expired. At the bank's urging, Schwing paid down its line of credit with the bank to $21 million from about $45 million. Then, about two months ago, Wells Fargo began "sweeping" Schwing's operating account of cash in an effort to reduce its revolving line of credit with the company. Schwing had a 20 year relationship with Wells Fargo.

In a guest post at Naked Capitalism:

The Obama Administration cannot energize their health care reform because the public demands reform in the financial sector, and quite frankly Obama has lost the 'high ground' of the reformer by his inability to free his administration from the growing taint of scandal and conflicts of interest.

And what of the FKDP?

I know we've seen The Big Picture visualize a trillion dollars, but here's another version in video form. From Mint:

To keep up to date on the bailout fuckery, check out ProPublica.

The banksters -- and I know this will surprise you -- are still cooking the books. Do we have any accountants on this blog? I'd love to hear from you; go read the whole thing at Bloomberg, because I think you'll find it beautiful in its own way:

At Citigroup, the recipient of $346 billion in fresh capital and asset guarantees from the government [that is, from us, the taxpayers], about 25 percent of the quarterly net income came thanks to [FASB's] debt securities rule change, the bank said.