As I was looking over the Paulson plan for the fifteenth or sixteenth time (what the hell -- it's only three pages long), I was struck, yet again, by its incredible vagueness. Moreover, watching the good secretary battle Congress and hearing the statements of various Congressional lobbyists, I continue to be amazed by the degree to which Wall Street seems to be trying to defraud the American people. According to Paulson, placing caps on executive compensation (aka "golden parachutes"), subjecting the Secretary's decisions to judicial oversight, giving the government an equity stake in the companies that it helps, and setting a firm end date to the program are all "deal breakers." In other words, the Secretary is convinced that companies will refuse to accept a federal bailout if these conditions are attached.

Wow. Did I miss something? Weren't Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke just saying that a bailout is the only thing that will save the economy from a catastrophic meltdown? Now, apparently, some financial companies have determined that a full-scale collapse of the U.S. economy is preferable to leaving a job without sufficient bonuses and separation packages. Rather than tell the heads of these companies to stick it in their ears, however, Secretary Paulson is suggesting that America's taxpayers need to cave in to their demands. This seems so amazingly shortsighted, so incredibly illogical that I began to wonder if there might not be another reason that the Secretary of the Treasury is demanding what seems to be tantamount to financial blackmail.

Howard Rodman suggested a bizarre scenario: he theorizes that Secretary Paulson left his job as CEO of Goldman Sachs in anticipation of this crisis. Hank then went to work for the Treasury in order to orchestrate a major rescue of Wall Street. Having coerced the Federal Government into buying billions of dollars of worthless securities with minimal oversight and provisions, he would subsequently return to Goldman Sachs where, presumably, he would be heavily rewarded for his good work in betraying the public trust.