Can we please stop saying "spent" as though we were consumers on a spending spree? The term is "invested" for most of the 170 or so instances of Treasury involvement with TARP recipients. If you want to account for likely losses separately, that would be great. I don't know how to characterize the Fed "loans" which reportedly reach about $2T total (tho' not necessarily net outstanding). The total opacity quotient here is indeed mind-boggling, and a refusal by the Fed to provide even slightly redacted documentation strikes me as criminal at least in the moral sense.

We all know that 2 months is not a medium term investment time frame. And most of us know that the Sept./Oct. crisis fix wasn't going to solve all economic problems in this country (or the world)

As for Blago, he's clearly incriminated as being a swaggering foul-mouthed speculator. If conviction via "trial by press conference" is sufficient, well, "off with his head!" and I don't mean ala the French Revolution but ala dear Alice.

People seem to love Fitzgerald, but so far this reeks of politicization. I say "so far" because I presume there's more substance to it already on record in evidence or testimony not released yet. I'm no fan of Blago, but I am no fan of rush to judgment either.

We Obama supporters just need to buckle down to the realities of smear politics and keep our objective in mind.

Recently it's occurred to me that most of modern American politics amounts to a power struggle between Wall Street and Washington. Hoping to break out of this cycle is fruitless. However, Obama does represent a temporary reprieve - an effectively populist leader who understands the concerns of both sides, but who is primary interested in positive outcomes for the "common folk," and communicates to us regularly and directly. That may give us a break long enough to restore the system to some semblance of operability.

The really troubling thing about the bailout seems to be that it isn't being implemented or responded to in any way that makes sense. Buying "troubled" assets at above-market value merely constitutes handing cash (the margin above the asset's value) to the firm requesting the bailout. Handing them cash gives "the people" no leverage whatsoever. It's as ridiculous to complain about AIG spending their bailout money on fancy parties as it was to give the money to them in the first place. They didn't sign a damn contract promising to only spend it for politically popular purposes; any such contract would be thousands of pages in length anyways. You gave them cash, they can do what they want with it, so shut up.

I believe that a simple method has been intentionally overlooked: just buy stock. If a company needs a bailout, have them issue a large amount of stock and spend $X for it at a fixed rate of the current market value as of the time the deal is struck. The company gets $X to survive with. In return, the government gets a proportional stake in the company depending on how much stock $X bought. We could then appoint a government representative to the Board of Directors of that company to represent the public interest. Only then would we have a mechanism by which we could have a say in how that company functions, much less what they do with our $X.

The neat thing about this is that it would use mechanisms that already exist in the market. No new laws or complicated legislation would be necessary to correct a bailed-out company's behavior. Just a shareholder's vote.

Of course, conservatives will scream "socialism" at this, but how is that system any more socialist than the one we've got going on now, which amounts to little more than a handout? As the company does better, we could gradually sell the stock back, take our profit, and get the government back out of the business of business ownership.

This is key to striking the quintessential American balance between economic conservatism and liberalism: every foray that government makes into business life should have a viable and responsible exit strategy. Get in, fix things, get out. That way we don't create more and more permanent political institutions in our business infrastructure. This is the beginning and end of the amount of concern that should be given to the interests of economic conservatives.

Why this has been overlooked is beyond me. Most likely it seems that the "powers that be" (aka. those who live in the revolving-door grey-area between financial business and government economic policy) don't want it and don't think we could understand why it's bad. The reason we couldn't understand why it's bad is that there is no good reason for why it's bad, and 2008 isn't a good year to feed us B.S.

You get what you pay for. All I ask is that our government be able to explain what, exactly, we are getting.

Now, maybe the Treasury is going to be able to play catch-up on the bookkeeping and (once the oversight committee manages to find office space and hire some interns) be able to produce a complete report itemizing just what we have bought for these ridiculous sums of money. Maybe they got a good deal. Maybe it'll take a few months to find that out. That would be fine.

But - bringing the auto bailout in to this - it's patently ridiculous to claim that nothing less than $700B is going to scare the financial boogeyman and prevent it from destroying us all, while $25B is far too much to pay to bail out an industry that actually produces goods and jobs.

Here's a concept that Washington could learn from Wall Street: R.O.I. That's "return on investment." It should be the first and last quesiton asked with any bailout situation.

I say, throw all the damn money at whatever you want whenever you want. Just at least buy their damn stock when you do it.