U.S. Congress Buys $700 Billion Fixer-Upper Package with $150 Billion Sugar Coating Added

a couple of the better fixer-uppers you and I bought earlier today!

The Consumerist and (I suppose, if credit is needing, Marketplace) did their best to explain to the rest of us exactly what the $850 billion bailout is/was ... in layman's terms, I suppose.

Marketplace's one-act play (sort of) summarized the Congressional "Rescue Plan" as a

"reverse sub-micro-standard mortgage shadow security purchase that gives us all part ownership of semi-insured debts that've been sold to us from inelastic bubble markets so that we can vertically resell, then unbundle the revenues according to Moody's astro-logarithm which gives a monetized valuation that has itself been subdivided into A-3 and G-minus pumpkin patches. Simply stated, the Q-grades are dumped and leveraged upwards across 25 underplummeries and our unicorn (don't ask!) gives it a kick, and presto: you've got 300 percent annual growth."

Of course, what all of the garble-de-dook our crooked Congress-persons and their media bedfellows dumped on us in seemingly politically correct catch phrases and sound bites means is that we bought nearly all of the bad mortgage debt of the unscrupulous lenders and uncareful borrowers of mortgage assets (and other even more specious debt) from Wall Street to Beijing and from Alaska to the southern tip of South America--all sugar coated with some out-and-out pork (rum, wooden arrows and wool for starters) to reign in the votes needed to slide it smoothly through both Houses of Congress despite 75% of all Americans hating every spoonful.

Sorry, Mary Poppins, but a spoonful of sugar most assuredly DOES NOT help this bitter pill go down!

If heroes in this debacle exist, they surely include both Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul who stood their ground (and votes) with customary honesty and (ultimately, as the week closes) sadness.

Of the four front-running candidates for President and Vice-president, only Sarah Palin did not vote for the $850 billion (actually more like two-trillion-dollars-plus within two years) bailout. Apparently, Alaskan governors are not permitted to vote in either House of Congress, gender notwithstanding. Maybe Sarah can break a tie in the Senate sometime after January 20, 2009.