I thought I heard that, but it might have just been the STFU that everyone poured in our ears.

getting his second $350B.

Atrios posted on this and has this quote from the NYTimes:

WASHINGTON — Faced with staggering new unemployment figures, Democratic Congressional leaders said on Friday that they were ready to provide a short-term rescue plan for American automakers, and that they expected to hold a vote on the legislation in a special session next week.

Seeking to end a weeks-long stalemate between the Bush administration and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, senior Congressional aides said that the money would most likely come from $25 billion in federally subsidized loans intended for developing fuel-efficient cars.

Isn't that special? Use the green money for bailouts, which supposedly will include greening the autos produced. But, of course, that money for R&D and retooling won't be there specifically for that purpose--at least as I read this.

By breaking that impasse, the lawmakers could also clear the way for the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., to request the remaining $350 billion of the financial industry bailout fund knowing he will not get bogged down in a fight over aiding Detroit.

Democrats are hoping Mr. Paulson will use some of that money to help individual homeowners avoid foreclosure. (My emphasis)

Dems and their freakin' Hope!

Can't they just demand that Paulson present a damn PLAN?

Maybe if there were powerful unions which could be brought to their knees, then they would demand Plans....

But, the bottom line is that BushCo gets its way once again. Even now. Amazing.

I'm getting pretty PO'd by our Dems.

A second risk -- that the Fed ends up losing billions on some of the assets accepted as collateral for loans -- is of small importance compared with what’s at stake

Good thing education, health care, secure retirement, or anything like that isn't at stake, because then the projected risk of the program needing money in the year 2042 would be of absolutely overwhelming importance.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his colleagues know that when the markets stabilize and the economy turns around, they will have to move fast to take back the extra cash and shrink the central bank’s balance sheet.

TRANSLATION: even if Obama does manage to salvage the economy, Bernanke and Paulson have set it up so that the minute an economic recovery appears to be happening, interest rates will be raised, because there is so much phony cash in the economy that any recovery would be extremely inflationary.

i love all the use of words to describe the most powerful and connected people in this country, if not the planet, as if they are helpless idiots unable to act, think, anticipate or take action via the powers and tools of their offices. "democrats hope" and "they will have to move fast" and oooooh, "it's a risky approach." gosh, don't break a sweat or anything, wouldn't want anyone at treasury to break a nail.

frankly, it's insulting. either they know where the fuck the money is, in specific amounts, and what they are getting for it; or they've just turned on the printing presses and opened the doors and walked out, leaving them available to any asshole with a large enough bag. i don't believe it's the latter. it's an insult to all our intelligences that they speak to us so, "we just don't know" and "we only have two options and none other." that part especially chaps my ass. no, shit for brains, there are more than "two ways" to stimulate the economy and reign in reckless banking mismangament and theft.

one way includes pitchforks and torches. would they like to try that?

I mean, two (or is it three?) trillion dollars seem to be... Well, nobody knows quite where.

And it's like... It's like... Remember how astronomers used to discover planets? They would look for perturbations, small inexplicable changes, in the orbits of planets they knew about, and work out the orbit of the new planet from what its gravitational pull had to be to cause the perturbations.

But here, there are no perturbations at all. Two (or is it three?) trillion dollars vanishes.... As if it went off into another dimension. It's not being lent, it's not being visibly managed, nobody's throwing loose cash around.... No gravitational pull from a heavy, unseen object at all. It's like Paulson poured water into a bucket with a hole in the bottom, but when you look under the bucket, there's no water there either, even though the bucket is dry. It's like a magic trick, a conjuration.

It's all very odd.

You'd think this would be a story, no?

we could talk about sweet things, that sweet moon of yours, for example...

ok, ok, no flirting.

but as to the idea that they don't have a plan: well, yes and no. there are most certainly a lot of people in the financial disaster who don't know jack from shit, and can't tell you up from down about the assest they hold, nor come up with a way to fix the eocnomy, or even the extent of the criminality involved...yes, i agree there is a whole mess of cluelessness out there and that condition pertains to people in gummint, the obama admin, bankers and treasury people.

but the highest levels? our congresscritters? no, some of them know *exactly* what's really going on. hence the lack of transparency. and you're spot on with the hyperinflation stuff. bankers and rethugs and treasury types *always* use the Fear of Inflation to tamp down dem efforts to get things done. they did it with clinton (bill) and they'll try it on obama. lucky (unlucky?) for us, the economy is way more fucked up now than it was in 92, so that's not going to fly nearly as well as it did back then.

"assets" i meant of course.