Copout

Another twist in that long and twisting road that the Treasury Secretary is leading the Lame Ducks down to keep from accepting blame for this financial disaster. Secretary Paulson is afraid to touch the rest of the fortune he insisted was necessary to keep us from disaster.

The U.S. financial system is stabilizing and the government does not plan to tap the remaining $410 billion of a financial rescue fund unless a further need arises, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Tuesday.

Paulson said he was unlikely to use the remains of the $700 billion bailout to launch substantial new programs, preferring to keep money in reserve for unforeseen emergencies and to preserve flexibility for the Obama administration.

"I'm going to do what we need to do to keep the system strong and to react the ways we need to react during the nine weeks I'm here, but I'm not going to be looking to start up new things unless they're necessary or it's just clear that they need to be done or that they make great sense," the Journal quoted Paulson as saying.

"I want to preserve the firepower, the flexibility we have now and those that come after us will have."

Paulson could be in for some tough questioning on Capitol Hill later Tuesday after saying last week he no longer planned to buy bad loans from banks and instead would use the congressionally approved bailout to inject capital directly into banks.

Bad loans, a.k.a. Toxic loans, consist of unknown quantities, which no value can be assigned to. He bluffed, and the financial community didn't fall for it.

Trickle down economics were a fraud and that has been exposed. Until a reality based government comes into power, the world has decided to wait it out. This one is a monumental failure.

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And Happy Birthday Dr.Sen. Howard Dean.