David Cay Johnston:

The Administration has scared the markets and some key legislative leaders, but it has not laid out a coherent, specific and compelling need for this enormous proposal, which is the equivalent of a one-time 55 percent income tax surcharge. (Instead the money will be borrowed, so ask from whom and how this much can be raised so quickly if the credit markets are nearly seized up with fear.)

Ask this question — are the credit markets really about to seize up?

Daniel Larison:

A useful thing to remember in the days to come: whenever someone yells about an impending catastrophe, he is probably either trying to sell you something or trying to steal something from you.  The mega-bailout is actually a case of trying to sell you on the idea that you should allow yourself to be robbed, so we should be even more wary.

It doesn’t surprise me that people in Wall Street and the government would try to exploit a crisis to grab power and rob us blind. But I am continually astonished when they don’t even try to conceal what they are doing and still get away with it. How many times can they fool us?

Hint: it’s a whole f***ing lot.

This is insane:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Because heaven forbid a $700 billion handout from the pinnacle of integrity that is the Bush administration to the notoriously incorruptible finance industry have any possibility of legal or administrative review. In an emergency like this, the most important thing is to give unlimited power to the same people who created the mess in the first place.