Bamboozled, again!

Now that we have all seen how the Treasury and Wall Street pulled the wool over Congress' eyes, a few of our Representatives are starting to see how foolish they were to trust the likes of Hank Paulson, Nancy Pelosi, et al.

Rather than using the bailout money to buy up bad assets and mortgages from banks, the Treasury bought into those banks and bailed out their friends on Wall Street. Main Street has had little to no benefit from the first half of the original $700,000,000,000 . Hopefully, Congress is starting to wise up and will require better expenditure of the second half, if allowed at all. But, I doubt it. Throw a little pork at these people and they'll fall all over themselves to give up whatever is required in return, regardless of what's right for the American people. AIG, banks and Wall Street, auto manufacturers - sure, let's give all of them money that we don't have.

"We gave them money for one thing and then they used it for another," said Rep. David Scott, a member of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee.

"They said we'd have more oversight; no oversight is in place. These are lies. We've been bamboozled. The Treasury secretary owes us an explanation," said the Georgia Democrat.

"Please don't come here and ask for another penny because if you do, I'm going to work 24 hours a day with the same people I worked with to support you to make sure that they do not support giving you another dime," said Rep. Maxine Waters of California.

Poor ol' Neel Kashkari, Hank Paulson's lightening rod and whipping boy , continues to try defending the actions of his boss. Rather than Paulson getting out there in front of Congress to get grilled, he sends out poor ol' Neel. Do you suppose he really gets paid enough to be treated like that or does he just enjoy the attention, no matter the price?

Meanwhile, they are still advocating the same old things that got us into this fix in the first place, more credit and bigger mortgages, rather than paying off debt and saving. "Reducing interest rates to get borrowers off the sidelines so they can afford to buy a home for the first time or afford a bigger home is the only thing that's going to help home prices, so we think it has some merit," Kashkari said. Sad. Some fools never learn.

Good old Wall Street Boys!

BTW, Hank Paulson was formerly the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs and Neel Kashkari was a former Vice President at Goldman, Sachs.