Anybody else gotten this email today?

From: Minister of the Treasury Paulson
Subject: REQUEST FOR URGENT CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP
Dear American:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.
I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.
This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check.
We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.
Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.
Yours Faithfully
Minister of Treasury Paulson
Posted by: LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown | September 22, 2008 at 12:36 PM

As for John Mack, yes, it’s bloody pathetic, isn’t it? Someone should say to him, “You don’t like what they’re doing? Well, how about you pony up with some of the tens of millions the mothership gives you if it’s such a bargain?”

i had to laugh the other day when john Mack of Morgan Stanley was whining about short sellers trampling his stock. I’d love to know who many short trades Morgan processes during the day.

Good post by the way. Don’t agree with some of it, but good work all the same. You’re always an interesting read.

Happily, some congresscritters aren’t just taking it lying down so any eventual agreement seems likely to be a good deal more palatable than the initial shocker (not exactly a high bar of course). The Treasury Secretary would be on a much tighter leash in terms of both reporting and oversight, and long suffering taxpayers are likely to end up with equity stakes proportionate to assets purchased from any given institution.

Yes, pete m, it surely is a fragile machine. I doubt there’ll be any shortage of looming calamities for quite some time.

JC, don’t know if you noticed but one little company (DHIL) has voluntarily opted out of the short selling ban. Nice response.

maybe things are more worrisome …

This ought finally get a warm glow out of you there is human decency still around

http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/080922/financial_aig_willumstad.html

Here’s his quickly knocked together rescue plan.

No extraordinary grants of power to Treasury Secretaries who might be appointed by the erratic and unqualified John McCain:

Either:
(i) do the rescue through the Fed, or
(ii) follow the Marshall Plan and use an independent agency with its head chosen by the chair of the relevant senate committee, as Paul Hoffman was chosen by Arthur Vandenberg…
Proper and appropriate congressional and judicial oversight…

High end pay reform:

Cancellation of current golden parachutes…
Look-backs in the future–pay over $1M per year conditioned on the long-term profitability of the enterprise over more than a decade…
Equity stakes for the government:

Government buys securities at current market… * For every $4 the government pays for debt securities, it pays a fifth dollar for equity warrants…
Make it a round $1 trillion in authority…

A no-filibuster pledge from ten Republican senators with respect to the household mortgage relief bill that will be moving through the congress immediately after the financial rescue/nationalization bill…

If Republicans block whatever bill the Democrats propose this week, Wall Street can stagger on for a month and a half and we will come back into session the day after election day and do what is right then…

Scary and fascinating at the same time.

Here are two terrific columns.