"The American people are angry about executive compensation, and rightfully so," Paulson said, as the hundreth or so congressman made the point that he or she couldn't support a bailout if those being bailed out of the crashing airplane got to ride a golden parachute to the ground.
Despite the speeded-up and pressurized atmosphere surrounding the bailout, already it seems to have taken on a sense of inevitability. The conventional wisdom is that some kind of bailout plan is going to pass Congress, and what we're talking about now is just the details of it - will it be the whole $700 billion chunk all at once, or some kind of phased-in plan, for example, and how will the call for limiting executive compensation be incorporated? When it comes to the bailout, we're past the whether and into the how.
So yesterday's hearing seemed mainly an opportunity to vent, for legislators who no doubt have been hearing from people like me - the ones who feel like they've been carefully negotiating the china shop that is our financial system, the one with the sign that says, "You break it, you own it."
