Centerblue.org

I’m seething.

Democrats are proposing common sense additions to the mega-bailout being asked for under threat of Armageddon according to Paulson. They’re asking that executive compensation be limited (I believe to $400,000 if I remember correctly) for banks participating in the bailout, and that taxpayers be given the opportunity to purchase ownership shares in companies participating through the use of “warrants”:

Several lawmakers, including Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), an influential member of the Banking Committee, are pushing for a provision that would require participating firms to grant the government warrants to purchase stock.

Sources familiar with the Treasury’s thinking said warrants would limit participation in the program. Only failing banks would be willing to give the government stock in exchange for buying up their bad assets, these sources said. But key Democrats said the point was critical.

“If this is an investment, the taxpayer should not be treated as dumb money,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “If we’re going to buy these securities that are illiquid, toxic, we need to make sure taxpayers get an equity ride so they get to benefit on the upside.”

Another point of dispute is Democrats’ insistence that the government be given authority to cut the salaries of executives and restrict their severance packages if they take taxpayer money. Paulson has said such a move would be “punitive” and deter companies from participating in the bailout.

Here’s a message for Paulson, in language not often seen on this blog:

GO F*CK YOURSELF.

You’re trying to sell this sack of garbage to Congress and the American public while using a Sword of Damocles over our heads preaching imminent doom, and you have the unmitigated gall to say to our faces that banks might be “deterred” from participating because we insist on an equity stake and executive pay equivalent to that received by the President in order to benefit from taxpayers’ largesse?

Why don’t these banks and their executives take their business, their stock, their toxic mortgage products, their hedge funds, their six digit bonuses, and their fancy yachts and SHOVE them?

Any banks refusing to accede to these conditions make clear that they didn’t really need the bailout to save anything except their own lifestyles and the status quo. And that, my friends, is not worth my taxpayer money.

Democrats, don’t you DARE cave in on these conditions or you will suffer the consequences at the polls in just a few weeks.