By KATIE JACOB

Copy Editor

Last week we found out that we (the taxpayers) doled out billions of dollars in bonuses to the AIG guys that dragged us into this mess (good job boys- where can I get a job that pays like that?)  And it turns out that Timothy Geithner, Secretary of Treasury extraodinaire, was behind removing the restrictions on bonuses.  That really inspires confidence.

Monday’s Geithner-a-thon, during which he unveiled his latest plan—ok, so according to Paul Krugman, Nobel prize-winning New York Times columnist, it’s really a rehash of the Henry Paulsen/Bush administration plan that worked so well six months ago- Krugman calls it a zombie plan (they keep killing it but it keeps coming back), to clean up the so-called toxic assets so that the banks can start lending again– left me more confused than ever.

Krugman says that he’s filled with DESPAIR over the plan.  That really doesn’t make me feel too good.  Krugman is very smart and I believe everything he says. He says it’s  a “trash for cash” plan, an open invitation for private investors to play heads I win/tails the tax payers lose. Hey, why do I have to play?  I don’t like those odds.

Arianna Huffington (www.huffingtonpost.com) explains that the toxic thinking that got us into this mess is part of Geithner’s DNA—a remix of the “letthebankers work it out” approach.  She says that Geithner still thinks that those people are “the best and the brightest.” Arianna  thinks they should put Geithner out to pasture.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to believe that these guys who f’d us over royally are the best and the brightest  or that even if they were, they would want to find a way out of this mess– because they made so much money getting us into it.  But that’s just me(extra space) and Arianna.

Geithner is so smart, he must know what he’s doing.  But I’m not enthusiastic.  I have a sense of foreboding about this. 

Matt Taibbi has an eight-page article in Rolling Stone entitled “The Big Takeover.” Taibbi says, “It’s over. We’re officially, royally fucked.” Sounds familiar. (Specifically, he’s referring to the AIG bailout here, but it’s basically all the same thing).  He says that we are fools in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity and that the worst part is we are still in denial –we think this is some kind of unfortunate mistake, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American dream.

I’m with Taibbi.  Hey, why don’t they make him Treasury Secretary?