I am government bailout and you can too!

Yesterday's entry about the idiocy of government bailouts was written with a high hand, because I thought the socialist terror was over. Unfortunately I was wrong.

Apparently Paulson and his pirate friends have a vested stake in bank insurance, and therefore needed to protect that market, as well.

Wait, what? Am I accusing Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, of being an evil, conniving, greedy, self-interested, monetary autocrat? Why, yes I am.

Secretary Paulson should resign immediately. The obvious reason for this (well obvious to anyone with a slight background in morality is that his conflict of interest is so glaring, so pointed, that anyone with any sense of business ethics and code of conduct would resign immediately) is that he was the former CEO of Goldman-Sachs. Goldman-Sachs, one of only two investment banks still operating after yesterday (the other being Morgan Stanley).

One might think that when Paulson left Goldman-Sachs for his civil position that he also forfeited his interest in the company. Paulson was so vested in that company that on a whim he can donate $100 million to a family foundation, then sold off a further $500 million in stock later that year. He claimed this was to adhere to conflict of interest rules, in fact. However, a little digging reveals that a U.S. government ethics rule exempts all returns from the sale of this stock from tax, which saved Paulson an estimated $200 million dollars. The stock was then put in a diversified "blind trust" which, interestingly, is made up of mutual funds.

But this conflict of interest is apparently not important enough to make the major news outlets for one of two reasons:
1. I'm the only one who sees it.
2. It's a long-standing tradition that Goldman-Sachs CEO's get government roles that indirectly benefit their company and therefore it isn't anything new.

The second is potentially the truer of the two. The following CEO's of G-S went on to work in civil service:
Corzine - New Jersey Senator then Governor
Friedman - Chairman of National Economic Council
Rubin - Secretary of the Treasury (Clinton Administration)
and best of all
Whitehead - Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Deputy Secretary of State, Director of NYSE, and the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation (not to be confused with the National September 11 Memorial & Museum Foundation chaired by NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg)

Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush again have all had economic advice whispered in their ears by Goldman-Sachs' former board members.
The CEO planting goes further: Bank of Canada's chairman is Mark Carney.

Anyway, this yet-another-bailout once again comes from both sides of the aisle. After meeting with President Bush, Paulson then met with Democrats Chris Dodd and Harry Reid, and Republican John Boehner. The general consensus is that this bailout is a way to"assist AIG in continuing to meet its obligations, mitigate broader disruptions and at the same time protect taxpayers."
Thanks for protecting me, Mr. Paulson. Did I mention that some of the diversified investment funds bought through the $500 million ethical conflict of interest sale Mr. Paulson made in 2006 went to AIG stock options? So Paulson is loaning AIG $85 billion of government (taxpayer) money to save a company he owns stock in. What was I saying earlier about conflict of interest?