The Last Stand of the Oligarchists

TheHill has George Soros's plan to rescue the economy after Hammerin' Hank Paulson's putsch was voted down by a suddenly measured and partially sane House of Representatives. Whether the House's actions were due to a dose of said moderation and sanity is up for debate. Personally I think it was the paralysis of fear brought about by having to make an actual decision so close to an election, but whatever the means, the end product was a positive outcome.

HouseGOP shrinkage, then, leaves us in the happy position of seeing a plan that's actually, ya know, good, gain some traction. And what Soros proposes is in fact good, as it addresses the underlying cause while doing more than just throwing money at the symptoms. To wit:

1. End the process of socializing the debt while privatizing the profits
2. Recapitalize the banks (and therefore have a say in how they're run) rather than just throw good money after bad purchasing devalued - no value, even? - assets
3. Provide homeowners on the "toxic" end of the mortgage scale the opportunity to refinance to something more reasonable without spending taxpayer dollars
   
4. Inject more cash into the securities market

Here's Soros's FT article in its full glory, and at this point it's the least sucky plan I've seen. It keeps the integrity of the market in tact while instituting the needed regulation to prevent the Randian Oligarchists* from sinking the Good Ship USA yet again, and avoids throwing cash at either the folks on the bottom or - more importantly - the top of this meltdown.

* Oligarch = someone who actually profits from Paulson's insanity, and has enough influence to almost make it a reality; Oligarchist = blind follower of whoever's at the top of the pecking order and voted "most likely to be used as kindling" in their senior class superlatives