On CNN now: ~ http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/12/news/economy/paulson/index.htm~

Is anyone else feeling the old "bait and switch", a once all-to-common method used by car salesmen to lure you in with one promise only to sell you another once you're in the office?

  We're rewarding the companies that led us this company to financial ruin who STILL continue to spend (AIG's now infamous spending spree on spas and golf retreats weeks after the initial bailout proposal).  I'll be the first to tell you what this is: we're being taken for a ride, you, me, all of us, by the Republican party and their Wall St investors and contributors.  In this, their final year of power for at least four years, they are scrambling to get as rich as they can on our dime.  Why else would the Bush administration fight so hard to make this happen?

  Don't be fooled: the bailout was never for our interests. If it were, we'd see some incentives. It's our money fishing them out so where's our stock options? Where's our payback? Where's our bailout?

  AIG got a reworked $152.5 billion deal, as the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department made significant changes to the terms of the company's original bailout. Kashkari stressed this was a "one-off event" to ensure the system's stability, not the establishment of a new bailout program.

  The Fed announced that it will reduce AIG's original $85 billion bridge loan to $60 billion, and it will cut the interest rate by 5.5 percentage points. In addition, the Treasury will use its special authority under last month's $700 billion bailout law -- the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program -- to purchase $40 billion in preferred stock.

  Greed is what led this country to financial ruin and the greedy are being rewarded yet again. In the end, year from now, we won't even look back on this. Most of us will have forgotten this even happened.  For now we have to sit back and watch the playboys spend our money like it's going out of style. Make yourself a margarita, sit back and toast AIG and its ilk. It's the closest you'll see to an actual payback, I'm afraid.