A Second Drive for the Buffalo Jump

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." H.L. Menken

As predicted, they’re back!! This time the Senate proposal is much better, but we have to trust them on that because the proposed Senate legislation is on double secret probation.

From the International Herald Tribune

• The senators issued no details of their proposal and said none would be available until Wednesday.

I guess the Bush/Paulson/Benanke team doesn't want us plebes reading the bill ahead of time and making truthful points in opposition by citing actual provisions of the proposed bail out rescue legislation. Keeping the legislation secret is a reasonable gambit because it's gotta work better than the truth.

According to Bloomberg, the Plunge Protection Team changed the incoming calls to the Congress from opposition to support:

• After a week-long torrent of calls and e-mails from angry voters opposing the rescue package, the tide turned after markets plunged on Sept. 29 in response to the House vote.
  
  "Over $1 trillion worth of market value was wiped off the books by the stock market drop," said Senator Robert Bennett, a Utah Republican. "It is ordinary people looking at ordinary pensions, with their ordinary Main Street kind of 401(k) plans, who lost that $1 trillion. And they lost it in a matter of minutes."

Interesting the Plunge Protection Team did not work to prevent that plunge. But, then as I noted earlier, perhaps the PPT achieved its mission for September 29, 2008. Perhaps the shock doctrine will work tomorrow now that some of the American Herd has been channeled down the driving lanes in a full gallop toward the buffalo jump.

I predict the three key elements of the original Paulson plan for creating the post of Emperor of the Treasury still exists in the Senate version. These three points are non-negotiable to the Paulson/Bush/Bernanke team. This is not about money. It is about power. So the three elements in the final bill will be:

• The Secretary of the Treasury can acquire anything; Mortgage related or not; Troubled or not; US headquartered or not. Either the legislation will do this explicitly or grant the Secretary the power, without limitation, to define terms.
• The Secretary of the Treasury can set the price at "such terms and conditions as are determined by the Secretary"
• No judicial review or very limited judicial review

With those provisions intact the rest of the Senate bill is probably irrelevant. The post of Emperor of the Treasury will have been created and it will be time to "consecrate the bond of obedience and assume the position".