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]

No idea, but it's truly bizarre that the Bush admin and the House and Senate Democrats are now being positioned as buddies while the Republicans -- including John McCain, one of whose major talking points this whole election cycle has been "taking on his own party," and who, according to some reports anyway, is here aligning himself with Republicans who don't identify him as "one of them" by any means -- pretend to be mavericky by suggesting a plan that, from the very little detail I've heard about it, doesn't make any sense at all ("less regulation, more corporate tax breaks"), and was basically a ploy to ruin negotiations at this stage. (The "plan" also looked barely to be one type-written page, from what Barney Frank waved in front of reporters last night.)