Iraqing the American Economy

The American economy hasn't just been wrecked, its been Iraqed.

As Senator Inhofe said Saturday:

"It is just outrageous that the American people don't know that Congress doesn't know how much money he (Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson) has given away to anyone,'' the Oklahoma Republican told the Tulsa World.

"It could be to his friends. It could be to anybody else. We don't know. There is no way of knowing.''

Bloomberg concurs, writing that the Federal Reserve has failed to comply with congressional demands for transparency and disclose the destination of at least $2 trillion dollars

Sound familiar?

Remember the missing billions of dollars which were earmarked for rebuilding Iraq, but have gone missing?

Naomi Klein points out that the guy initially chosen to serve as chief investment officer for the bailout program previously:

Served as executive director of Paul Bremer's infamous Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, during the early days of the Iraq War. Part of his job was to hire civilian staff, which made him an integral part of the partisan machine that filled the Green Zone with Young Republicans, investment bankers and Dick Cheney interns. Qualifications weren't a big issue back then, because the staff's main function was to hand over stacks of taxpayer money to private contractors, who were the ones actually running the occupation. It was this nonstop cash conveyor belt that earned the Green Zone a reputation, in the words of one CPA official, as "a free-fraud zone." During Senate hearings last year, when [the proposed head of the bailout program] was asked what he had learned from his experience at the CPA, he said he thought that contracts should be handed out with more "speed and flexibility" — the same philosophy he cited back when he was in charge of regulating Wall Street traders.

Imhofe also pointed out the parallels between the bailout and the Iraq war:

"I have learned a long time ago. When they come up and say this has to be done and has to be done immediately, there is no other way of doing it, you have to sit back and take a deep breath and nine times out of 10 they are not telling the truth,'' he said.

"And this is one of those nine times.''

***

"Congress abdicated its constitutional responsibility by signing a truly blank check over to the Treasury Secretary,'' he wrote.

The powers-that-be scared Congress with doomsday scenarios of Saddam helping Al Qaeda build a nuclear bomb so that Congress wrote a "blank check". Then the taxpayer's money disappeared - without a paper trail or oversight - into the pockets of the well-connected.

The exact same thing is happening with the bailout. They're not only wrecking the American economy, they're Iraqing it.

The same thing happened with 9/11 as well. Congress was terrified into signing an Anti-American Patriot Act because it was told that otherwise Al Qaeda was going to get us. But instead of actually taking steps to increase the national security of the U.S., the Patriot Act has been used as a cash cow for "security consulting firms" (as well as those hostile to the Constitution).