Secretary Paulson Wants a Section 8

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson

Wall Street’s financial mess is complicated. The bail-out is complicated.

But one thing is clear: whatever is to be done must be done in the sunshine with full recourse for chicanery and self-dealing.

Section 8 of Secretary Paulson’s proposal, a single, critical sentence almost completely ignored by the press, is chilling in its arrogant opposition to checks and balances, a basic tenet of democracy:

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.

Wall StEven if you don’t understand credit default swaps and derivatives (and obviously most of Wall Street doesn’t!), you can understand a shell game. This is outrageous. The bail-out must not be done by the Executive Branch alone.

Congress and the Judiciary must have oversight.

It is ironically fitting that the term “Section 8” is a slang term for insanity.  It refers to discharge from the Army resulting from psychological unfitness or undesirable character traits.

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This post was published as a letter to the editor on 9/27/08 by the Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, CA).
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080927/OPINION/809270318/1044/OPINION02?Title=Letters_to_the_Editor

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3 Comments on “Secretary Paulson Wants a Section 8

  1. Stephen, you really don’t expect corporate news to report the whole truth do you? Boy wonder and his boys will keep every little detail secret until after they get their hands on the money, then the small print will appear. The bailout also includes FOREIGN banks as well, another little “secret” that corporate news will not publish on the front page.
    [commented online in the Press Democrat]
    http://forums.pressdemocrat.com/eve/forums?a=dl&f=3601086917&s=2151084365&x_id=809270318&x_subject=&x_link=http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080927/OPINION/809270318

  2. Thank-you Stephen Cotler for pointing out this outrageous and de****able provision in the bail out bill. The administration is trying to stampede everybody into crippling the social programs, including universal health care, that will result from the coming democratic victory by giving all of this country’s money to the very rich. I hop[e that somebody has the courage to do a filibuster.
    [commented online in the Press Democrat]
    http://forums.pressdemocrat.com/eve/forums?a=dl&f=3601086917&s=2151084365&x_id=809270318&x_subject=&x_link=http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080927/OPINION/809270318

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