Unforeseen (?) consequences

Another day, another… you know the rest.

We’re afraid we may have been overcome by "crappy idea fatigue", but persevere we must.

The Obama administration is considering asking Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy, according to an administration document.

The government at present has the authority to seize only banks.

Giving the Treasury secretary authority over a broader range of companies would mark a significant shift from the existing model of financial regulation, which relies on independent agencies that are shielded from the political process. The Treasury secretary, a member of the president's Cabinet, would exercise the new powers in consultation with the White House, the Federal Reserve and other regulators, according to the document.

(italics, ours)

For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that was done with respect to the Patriot Act regarding governmental incursion into private matters, how is all this remotely any better? At least the Patriot Act had an expiration date. Now we are faced with the prospects of a ‘roid-raged Congress leveling confiscatory taxes at target groups they don’t like all in an attempt to cover for their monumental incompetence and this plan that would give a two-time tax cheat and someone on the President’s cabinet the power to decide what firms and institutions they will effectively take over.

What is the criteria for “qualifying” for a takeover? What is it exactly that Geithner and...Larry Summers(?)... Rahm Emanuel(?) will do once they take over these entities? And how will this arrangement not be subject to political chicanery?

What galls us more than anything, though, is that we feel compelled to ask these very specific questions when just the concept, the mere notion of this plan should be dismissed out of hand, no questions asked.

And everybody was up in arms over the expansion of Executive power during the Bush years?

B-Daddy predicted, years ago, that the expansion of Executive power, though passing legal muster and even for legitimate purposes of defending the country against foreign and domestic terror threats would prove to have disastrouus long-range consequences. We didn't want to believe him but our John the Baptist-Messiah/Bush-Obama meme appears to be fleshing out.