$700 Billion And They Put You On The Day Shift

In all the talk about the proposed $700 Billion bailout of the finance industry, precious few words have been used to justify that amount of money. This quote from Forbes is more scary than any "Friday the 13th" movie:

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

In other words, the pulled the $700 Billion dollar figure out of their collective nether region.

You would have to be insane to construct a crisis management plan that was based entirely on a made-up number. Or you would have to consider the source. Allow me to engage in some political paranoia.

The hallmark of conservative political theory is that government is far too big and it needs to be pared down. One of the favorite tactics of conservatives is to stop funding programs they consider unnecessary. This prevents the conservatives from actually having to stand up to cut a program, instead they simply starve it to death. They call this tactic "Starve the Beast".

Now consider what might be going on in Karl Rove's mind. He knows that the polls are looking grim for McCain and the chance of a Republican being elected President in November are very slim. Rove knows that Democrats now control the House and Senate and that the Dems might achieve a veto proof Senate in November. There is no better way to prevent the Democrats from enacting their programs than to saddle them with a huge debt that will be cripple them for the next decade as the country struggles to pay off its collective mortgage.

Grover Norquist laughs. The people cry.