Instruc­tions:

1/ Print.
2/ Trim.
3/ Deliver to the near­est free-​market abso­lutist. If none are ready to hand, mail it to 1126 E. 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637.
4/ Repeat as necessary.

(Image by Jes­sica Hagy.)

Dick Cheney, once again demon­strat­ing that he’s a man who will not be cowed by the reality-​based community:

Tony Fratto, Mr. Bush’s deputy press sec­re­tary, said Mr. Cheney and others hoped to reas­sure the crit­ics that the pro­posal is an emer­gency response to a crit­i­cal prob­lem, and not an “aban­don­ment of the belief that our mar­kets work and our free market system works.’’

Finally, a web­site for all you out there in the Schaden­freude crowd, whether you’re a stal­wart Marx­ist con­vinced you’re wit­ness­ing the vin­di­ca­tion of all you’ve ever dared to believe and hope for, and are stand­ing at the edge of your par­tic­u­lar hill or dale gig­gling glee­fully as the rap­ture in reverse seems to go down in front of your very eyes; a starv­ing New York artist/teacher/grad. stu­dent who’s ter­ri­bly sick of having to send your meager dol­lars out into the New York night to com­pete for food, apart­ments, and beer with the dol­lars of the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try, which have for as long as you can remem­ber seemed to be so much more and so much more per­sua­sive than your own pallid green­backs; or whether, per­haps, a you’re merely a con­ser­v­a­tive investor/MBA type who was con­vinced that the boun­teous boun­ties of the risk rev­o­lu­tion were simply too good to be true and who is now a bit unnerved to find your­self shiv­er­ing in the cold watch­ing the wreck­age and shar­ing the spirit with a bunch of pinko com­mies and indi­gent know-​nothing artist-​intellectuals.

For all of you, my friends far and near, there’s the the Hedge Fund Implode-O-Meter. Have fun, and play nice.

The rest of you, per­haps wor­ried that a drain­ing sea strands all sailors, can read up on the latest bit of bad news out of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac crisis, which, as you may recall, was sup­posed to be all cleared up by now. Well, it’s not.

Really, it’s that bad. Yves Smith calls it a “financial coup d’etat.” I smell a finan­cial ver­sion of the Patriot Act, whereby no Con­gress­man can, for polit­i­cal rea­sons, stand up to stop a very bad bill that they have not under­stood or likely even read.

The short ver­sion of the problems:

1/ Unlim­ited power for the Trea­sury Depart­ment (and no judi­cial review or Con­gres­sional over­sight, except for very scant report­ing requirements).

2/ No assur­ance that the gov­ern­ment (i.e. we) will not pay too much money for the distressed/toxic assets that lie at the heart of this steam­ing mess.

3/ No reg­u­la­tory overhaul.

4/ A decent like­li­hood that the government’s AAA credit rating will suffer, which means a tum­bling dollar. (Update: 9/22: This one, inci­den­tally, is basi­cally inevitable for any pro­posal big enough to have a chance at avert­ing crisis, so it’s prob­a­bly not fair to lump it in with the others. Still, it’s some­thing to think about.)

Want to learn more? Good, read this: Why You Should Hate the Trea­sury Bailout Proposal.