Still the same stupidity.
Reprinting an item Polistra wrote in late September:

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It appears that the Great Nation Robbery, now that it has been worked out in the form of legislation, has acquired the acronym EESA.

Uniquely appropriate, since this bit of suicidal idiocy follows the exact same philosophy as the plain ESA. In other words, it tries to break the laws of nature.

The regular Endangered Species Act tries to break the laws of nature by preventing a species from dying off. It never works and always creates great harm. Evolution is nothing more than the dying of species and the increase of other species, in each specific location. One species is fading out in this location because it's no longer making the best use of the available resources. When you try to keep this fading species alive, you're not doing it any favors; you're only preventing other species from taking its place and making better use of the resources. And at the same time you're stealing property from humans, which is the real reason for the ESA.

Same with this new EESA (Economic Endangered Species Act). The giant reptile called Bankerosaurus Fraudulenti is dying off because he has eaten up all the available resources. If we were obeying the laws of economic nature, we would let B. Fraudulenti fade and die to leave more room for other critters, some of which may be more honest and less wildly all-consuming.

No, no, no, we can't do that. Must keep B. Fraudulenti alive, and must preserve every aspect of its weird habitat: dishonestly high house prices, forced low interest rates, impossibly high stock prices. And at the same time we must also steal property from honest people via the tax of inflation, since we'll never pay this monstrous amount in direct taxes.

We will reap what we sow. History will remember this pack of thieves and gangsters, and history will spit on their graves.

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Now in February, after a supposed change of administration, nothing has changed. We're still arguing about how to keep the unsustainable bubble inflated, and how much to spend to keep the unsustainable bubble inflated. A few major commentators do seem to recognize reality, but nobody in power is willing to allow normal evolution.

We should be arguing about how to soften the effects of a return to reality; instead we're still arguing about how to maintain the fantasy.

As mentioned before, infrastructure and public works are actually a valid part of softening the impact, especially short-term projects (i.e. "pork"). Ideally these projects would keep many people occupied and fed while the criminal syndicate called "Wall Street" is utterly eliminated, leaving honest businesses more room to operate and grow without criminal competition from fraudsters. That's not what we're doing. We're doing some public works, but mainly we're rewarding and re-energizing the criminal syndicate.

Can we spell Yeltsin?


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Update 2/10:

Geithner just said "We will restart the securitization system."

Yessir, that's how you fix a problem. Just like Alcoholics Anonymous gives the drunk as much whiskey as he can swallow, just like Sully Sullenberger saved the plane by steering it straight into the ground. What's that you say? AA tries to get the drunk to stop drinking? Sully tried to land the plane smoothly? Well then, they're not nearly as smart as Tim Geithner!

Dropping the bad parody and getting deadly serious: We desperately need a return to sober banking. We need to let interest rates rise to their natural level, probably around 15%. Then bank savings accounts will become irresistible investments, and banks will have a good reason to sell loans. Each bank would have to function on its own, without using the Madoff Mafia for nonexistent "money"; and each competent bank would make a good profit on its own.
  ¶ 11:01 AM