bad deal rising

Paul Krugman has some great posts on the bailout over at his blog.

"And there’s no quid pro quo here — nothing that gives taxpayers a stake in the upside, nothing that ensures that the money is used to stabilize the system rather than reward the undeserving."

as does Josh over at TPM:

"I'm quite convinced that some drastic action needs to be taken to avoid a cascading and debilitating series of crises. But the more I look at this plan, the more wrongheaded it seems. But if I'm understanding this deal, the taxpayers are going to pony up close to a trillion dollars to take bad debts off the hands of financial institutions who were foolish enough to make the deals in the first place. And in exchange, I think the tax payers get nothing?"

the last figure I saw was $2,333 from every man, woman & child. to bailout an industry that has been preying (& profiting) on those same people for years. with no hope of ever seeing that money again. that seems fair? once again we are rewarding bad behavior w/no consequences or incentive for those institutions to change that behavior.

UPDATE: Robert Reich weighs in.