I've written so many times about how dishonest and dishonorable Hank Paulson has been and continues to be.

 

That Congress allowed this Bushite crook to dole out $700 billion, soon to be trillions, to his crony thieves on Wall Street without having effective oversight in place first is unforgivable and nuts.

 

Why isn't Congress stopping the giveaway, recovering the monies, and permitting only those with integrity to distribute those monies under the congressional caveats Paulson (who should be immediately removed from the entire process) deliberately ignored (for which he must be held accountable) that now will be the purview of the finally announced watchdog committee?   The American people don't even know who or what institutions have received the $250 billion Paulson already gave away.

 

As Matthew Rothschild at The Progressive wrote: "Henry Paulson is a bad witness for himself.

Testifying before Congress this morning, he said: 'I am very proud of the decisive actions' he has taken as Treasury Secretary in this economic crisis.

What's there to be proud of?

He lavished $250 billion of our money on reckless banks, but didn't even bother to demand a say in how the banks operate.

These banks, which got us into the mess in the first place, were about to go bankrupt, and he had them over the barrel, and all that he extracted was a concession on executive pay.

In a New York Times op-ed today, he acknowledged that 'the decline in the housing market is at the root of the economic downturn and our financial market stress.'

But he hasn't called for a moratorium on foreclosures.

Or a freeze on subprime mortgage rates.

Or a write-down on the mortgages to make them more affordable and more in line with pre-bubble prices.

Or federal purchases of those mortgages, as even John McCain advocated.

No, his answer, he said in the Times, is "more access to lower-cost mortgages."

But the kicker is, he isn't requiring the banks to provide this access. So they're hoarding the money, and contemplating buying up other banks rather than make loans to homeowners and businesses.

On top of that, as Naomi Klein has pointed out on Democracy Now on Monday, Paulson "pushed through a tax windfall for the banks . . . that allows the banks to save a huge amount of money when they merge with each other. And the estimate is that this represents a loss of $140 billion worth of tax revenue for the U.S. government."

Paulson's response to this crisis has been arrogant, incompetent, untransparent, and crony.

We're all the poorer for it."

So, Hank Paulson has distributed billions in giveaways to criminal banks, that created this financial crisis with the help of the Bush regime, and are now using that money to create a giant illegal banking monopoly in this country.   Is Congress that blind and dumb to the Bushite continuing corruption that they plan to ignore the potential disaster that the merger mania monopoly these banks plan to inflict on this country and its people with the bailout money?