Preserving the plutocracy

MANIFESTO

It looks like we're back to business as usual in DC.

The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials.

... The administration believes it can sidestep the rules because, in many cases, it has decided not to provide federal aid directly to financial companies, the sources said. Instead, the government has set up special entities that act as middlemen, channeling the bailout funds to the firms and, via this two-step process, stripping away the requirement that the restrictions be imposed, according to officials.

... In one program, designed to restart small-business lending, President Obama's officials are planning to set up a middleman called a special-purpose vehicle—a term made notorious during the Enron scandal—or another type of entity to evade the congressional mandates,

I didn't say so at the time, but the howls of protestation that Congressional grandstanders made regarding executive pay a week or so ago now seem to be what they were: just another opportunity for legislators to make it appear as if they actually cared about the country's inequitable economic system. We now see how much good their expostulations were.

This policy is a "signing statement" in everything but name.