Bush's Final Pillage

excerpt from new Naomi Klein article:
"...How else to make sense of the bizarre decisions that have governed the allocation of the bailout money? When the Bush administration announced it would be injecting $250 billion into America’s banks in exchange for equity, the plan was widely referred to as “partial nationalization”—a radical measure required to get the banks lending again. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had seen the light, we were told, and was now following the lead of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

In fact, there has been no nationalization, partial or otherwise. American taxpayers have gained no meaningful control over the banks, which is why the banks are free to spend the new money as they wish. At Morgan Stanley, it looks like much of the windfall will cover this year’s bonus pool. Citigroup has been hinting it will use its newfound $25 billion buying other banks, while John Thain, the chief executive of Merrill Lynch, told analysts that “At least for the next quarter, it’s just going to be a cushion.” The U.S. government, meanwhile, is reduced to pleading with the banks that they at least spend a portion of the taxpayer windfall for loans – officially, the reason for the entire program.

What, then, is the real purpose of the bailout? My fear is this rush of deal making is something much more ambitious than a one-off gift to big business; that the Bush version of “partial nationalization” is rigged to turn the U.S. Treasury into a bottomless cash machine for the banks for years to come. Remember, the main concern among big market players, particularly banks, is not the lack of credit but their battered share prices. Investors have lost confidence in the honesty of the big financial players, and with good reason...."