The Capital for 11/12/08: Paluson's Shame Continues

It just gets worse with this guy and this bailout.

The government has abandoned the original centerpiece of its $700 billion rescue effort for the financial system and will not use the money to purchase troubled bank assets.

Instead, they will.....

...Use $250 billion of the program to purchase stock in banks as a way to bolster their balance sheets and encourage them to resume more normal lending

Remember originally the plan, that The Treasury Department was supposed to purchase the assets of these troubled banks. Remember.

I guess a change of heart has occurred:

The administration decided that using billions of dollars to buy troubled assets of financial institutions at the current time was "not the most effective way" to use the $700 billion bailout package, he said.

The announcement marked a major shift for the administration which had talked only about purchasing troubled assets as it lobbied Congress to pass the massive bailout bill.

You don't need to be an economics major or professor to know that a promise was broken here. If Paulson proposed doing what he is doing now, then he probably wouldn't get the money in the first place. The money was needed for those banks' stupid mistakes to be taken care of by the government to have a real trickle down effect on Main Street.

Instead, you have another sneaky reversal by Paulson and company, with the Cheney Administration not giving a hoot about it.

As Jerome a Paris said a few days before:

Can Obama stop the looting before it is too late?