Lawmakers debate pizza vs. Thai

[koganbot]

My second-favorite sentence in the NY Times story on the bailout agreement:

After the overnight drafting efforts on both sides of Capitol Hill — with pizza on the House side, and Thai food in the Senate — Democratic officials said they had completed a unified draft of a bill.

My first-favorite sentence (key ingredient in bold):

They also said that there would be limits on pay packages for executives whose firms seek assistance from the government and a mechanism for the government to be given an equity stake in some firms so that taxpayers have a chance to profit if the companies prosper in the months and years ahead.

Fingers crossed that this works. Waiting for Krugman to tell me what to think, but he hasn't posted yet: but I get the impression that the public conversation about the proposal actually made the likely legislation much better. The executive-pay-package limits are a minor issue - though the limits help to reduce "moral hazard," supposedly. Major is that the public sector gets some authority rather than just providing the moolah. Questions: Is the oversight really devised to be strong and effective and to help create [buzzword alert] transparency? How will the equity stake be determined? (Oh yeah, and what's an equity stake? Can you put it on pizza?)

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Of course McCain wanted Vietnamese and for about an hour fucked everything up -- luckily they just didn't have the votes.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

(And McCain hasn't even eaten Vietnamese food OR Thai food since March of 2003! He has indigestion problems and likely would have brought his own food anyway.)

[koganbot]

(Don't think McCain was part of the House or Senate conferences, though I don't know. The photo op with Bush and McCain and Obama was later in the day.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

He was actually in New York avoiding the David Letterman show last night, only arrived in D.C. this morning after the Clinton Global Initiative talk. I need to fire both my fact-checkers and joke-writers.