{"id":10,"date":"2008-09-28T20:41:45","date_gmt":"2008-09-28T20:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=10"},"modified":"2008-09-28T20:41:45","modified_gmt":"2008-09-28T20:41:45","slug":"its-here-bailing-out-the-bigwigs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rant.godshell.com\/?p=10","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s here&#8230;  Bailing out the bigwigs&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s out. Read it <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/09\/28\/news\/pdf\/firstdraft.pdf\" title=\"CNN - Draft of Rescue Bill\">here<\/a>. It&#8217;s early enough that we don&#8217;t have a full handle on everything in it yet. What is know is the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Insurance covering any assets purchased by the government<\/li>\n<li>Oversight by the government via the Financial Stability Oversight Board (members of which are not to be additionally compensated)<\/li>\n<li>Money will be dispersed in stages, starting with a $250 billion disbursement<\/li>\n<li>The Secretary of the Treasury gets to sell off these assets when and however he wants&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Provisions to help homeowners (including owners of rental properties) keep or refinance their mortgages (Apparently the HOPE for Homeowners program is highlighted)<\/li>\n<li>Wording to prevent golden parachutes, but it looks like there are likely ways around this. So this seems to be working just to make certain partied happy as opposed to a definite prohibition. (Warning! This looks like a red herring!)<\/li>\n<li>All information related to assets purchased by the government will be made public within 2 days of the transaction<\/li>\n<li>A report on the current state of regulatory reform has to be submitted by January 20, 2009&#8230;. This is a report to congress, however, and will not necessarily become public.<\/li>\n<li>It appears that in 5 years, upon the expiration of this bill, if there&#8217;s a shortfall, that shortfall can be recouped from the companies benefiting from the act.<\/li>\n<li>Financial experts and consultants can be brought in for advice (presumably in paid positions)<\/li>\n<li>The treasury can, optionally, take an ownership in any company participating in this bailout.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is a lot here. The plan has expanded a tad from a mere 3 page proposal to a 106 page draft. I&#8217;m still skeptical of this entire process, I&#8217;m of the opinion that the market will right itself given time, but as far as a bill goes, it doesn&#8217;t seem too bad &#8230; Though I am not a lawyer and I don&#8217;t completely understand everything in the draft.<\/p>\n<p>One thing I would like to point out is that this bill gives an insane amount of power to the Secretary of the Treasury. At the moment, that is <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Henry_Paulson\" title=\"Wikipedia - Henry Paulson\">Henry Paulson<\/a>, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs. I don&#8217;t know much about this guy, but regardless, this feels like an awful lot of power for someone with such ties to the financial community. I could, of course, be wrong, and this may be the perfect person to handle this. But there are a number of provisions within the draft to prevent the limitation of the power of the Secretary&#8230; I&#8217;m not sure that&#8217;s such a wise decision.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless, there it is. I&#8217;m sure there will be a lot of talk over the next few hours, possibly days. And I&#8217;ll bet that the wording will change, probably significantly, prior to it being accepted&#8230; And, unfortunately, as much as I&#8217;d like to see it fall flat and not get passed, I can almost guarantee that it will pass.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s out. Read it here. It&#8217;s early enough that we don&#8217;t have a full handle on everything in it yet. What is know is the following: Insurance covering any assets purchased by the government Oversight by the government via the Financial Stability Oversight Board (members of which are not to be additionally compensated) Money will &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/rant.godshell.com\/?p=10\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;It&#8217;s here&#8230;  Bailing out the bigwigs&#8230;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rant.godshell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rant.godshell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rant.godshell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rant.godshell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rant.godshell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rant.godshell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rant.godshell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rant.godshell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rant.godshell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}