I just caught the new Senator Chris Dodd (the Banking Committee chair, if you'll recall) on Politico's The Crypt, an outline for the bailout to go up against Paulson's "save the bad guys" scheme, and I think it's a good start towards thinking our way out of this hole without giving the villains everything they want.
Some of the bigger points are as follows after the jump:
A provision that would require the Treasury to take 65 percent of any profits it makes from the newly purchased assets and put it into the federal government's HOPE program, an affordable housing program.
Brilliant move; there is no guarantee that any of these assets will make a profit, but there has to be a provision that will benefit the real victims of the subprime mortgage crisis: the low-end home buyers.
An oversight board that not only includes the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the SEC, but congressionally appointed, non-governmental officials.
Let's get some more balance of power and oversight in here to make sure that the executive isn't just writing blank checks to friends.
Limits on executive compensation. This is a major stumbling point for Paulson in his negotiations with Congress, but cracking down on Wall Street executive salaries will be a major selling point for lawmakers.
This is the key. Paulson is the product of the gambling-addiction culture of Wall Street and his first and last instinct is to say that you need to provide incentives for CEOs to help fix this mess; what he doesn't realize is that there are plenty of economists that can do those jobs and aren't compromised multi-billionares that caused the mess in the first place: let's get some ivy league econ professors in there and see what they can do, eh?
I don't know the specifics of Dodd's plan. I wouldn't understand them even if I did. I'm not a money guy, I'm an ethics guy... and from what I can see, Dodd's plan, even if it gives a lot of concessions to the government, has an air of fairness that Paulson's golden parachute legislation distinctly lacks.
UPDATE:
From The Huffington Post:
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
This is from Section 8 (ha ha) of the Paulson plan. Anyone still think Dodd's plan isn't vastly better now?