Recently, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) quipped on the floor of the House that the GOP health care plan amounted to: "1) Don’t get sick, and 2) If you do get sick, die quickly." Yesterday, John Boehner (R-OH), the top GOP man in the House, finally unveiled the official GOP plan...and did little to disprove Rep. Grayson. The GOP plan would allow firms like WellPoint (WLP) and Aetna (AET) to continue to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. It would not offer any subsidies to the working poor to help them get covered, and would not require people to buy health insurance, or for employers to offer it. It would make it harder for people to sue if they are injured by medical malpractice. The use of contingency fees by lawyers in malpractice suits would be strictly limited. Thus, for example, if the doctor misread your ...

That's a question I'm seeing more people ask, and for good reason. Bloomberg News has been on a little bit of a crusade to find out what the Fed is doing with our money, for instance, and I for one hope they gain some traction. See the following excerpt:"Members of Congress, taxpayers and investors urged the Federal Reserve to provide details of almost $2 trillion in emergency loans and the collateral it has accepted to protect against losses.At least five Republican members of Congress yesterday called for the Fed to disclose which financial institutions are borrowing taxpayer money and what troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral. More than 300 more investors and taxpayers also pressed for more disclosure in e-mails and interviews with Bloomberg News."There cannot be accountability in government and in our financial institutions without transparency,'' Texas Senator John

...

By relaxing the US financial system’s mark-to-market accounting standards, the government is effectively deactivating the financial “early warning system” that let investors know that a global credit crisis was brewing, says Jennifer Yousfi in Money Morning.

By relaxing the U.S. financial system’s mark-to-market accounting standards, the U.S. government is effectively deactivating the financial “early warning system” that let investors know that a global credit crisis was brewing – and kept it from turning into a total global meltdown, professional investors warn. As part of the just-passed U.S. bailout bill, the government has reiterated the Securities and Exchange Commission’s authority to relax the mark-to-market standards. If the SEC actually follows through on that directive, many professional investors worry that we won’t catch on to the next leg of the ongoing credit crisis until it’s way too late. While politicians point to mark-to-market rules as the cause of the billions in write-downs and losses suffered by financial firms in recent quarters, in fact, it was mark-to-market accounting that first exposed the underlying problems in the complex markets for ...

OK, let’s recap this whole thing.  Hank Paulson has been consistently behind the curve.  The crisis was easily foreseeable, but it was attacked piecemeal.  Then again, some of the piecemeal solutions were actually well-crafted, that included substantial protections for the taxpayers. 

For example, AIG (AIG) is paying a very steep interest rate for its bridge loan and for the privileged taxpayers who get most of the equity in the firm. However, the decision was made that they had to get ahead of the whole problem and deal with it on a systemic basis after the markets started to seriously unravel.

The credit market comes to a screeching halt.  So a week before Congress is set to adjourn, he recognizes the crisis and comes out with a bare-bones proposal (2 ½ pages), which pretty much says, "Give me $700 billion to buy just about any asset from anybody I choose,

...

Apparently, House Republicans are in open revolt against the Wall Street bailout plan put forth by the White House and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Part of it may have to do with all the changes that the Democrats made to the plan to make it palatable to their constituents, like allocating 20% of profits made by the US Treasury on the deal to a program to help low-income folks keep their homes.As the AP reports ... A White House summit meeting on Thursday meant to shore up John McCain's shaky campaign "devolved into a contentious shouting match." And that's how McCain's own campaign described it.The meeting revealed that President Bush's $700 billion bid to combat the worst financial crisis in decades had been suddenly sidetracked by fellow Republicans in the House, who refused to embrace a plan that appeared close to acceptance by the Senate and ...