nonelvis: (DW dalek)
nonelvis ([personal profile] nonelvis) wrote2008-09-25 05:20 pm

Holy crap.

It's not like I have any faith at all in the current administration, but this is just astonishing:

In fact, some of the most basic details [of the Wall Street bailout plan], including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."


Apparently there is no one in the entire U.S. Treasury Department qualified to even make a guess at how much this bailout could cost. After all, it's not like anyone over there is responsible for "[Serving] the American people and strengthen[ing] national security by managing the U.S. Government's finances effectively, promoting economic growth and stability, and ensuring the safety, soundness, and security of the U.S. and international financial systems."

We are so screwed.

[identity profile] kalleah.livejournal.com 2008-09-25 11:35 pm (UTC)(link)
I can't think about it too much or I will weep uncontrollably. What got me going last night was seeing Bill Clinton on The Daily Show ... SOMEBODY PUT THAT MAN BACK IN CHARGE, QUICK. I miss my Bill.

[identity profile] elliptic-eye.livejournal.com 2008-09-26 02:45 am (UTC)(link)
I would assume that it's a lot of books, and that they are very complicated books, but, er… isn't there somebody with a calculator going through these companies' books? Somewhere? Sufficiently motivated teams of lawyers can comb through documents of incomprehensible magnitude in days; surely sufficiently motivated accountants can do the same.

Holy shit.

I don't yet understand why "May you live in interesting times" is a curse, but I have a feeling that I'm about to.