They say sunshine is the best disinfectant. Barack Obama once passed a bill to make the government show their spending on the Internet...for that they called him a Liberal. They were right.
Transparency is a Liberal value and we should embrace it...especially now.
We need to exact a price from the power structure in return for our $700 billion. Bernie Sander's principles are a very good start, but they don't go far enough. More follows...
We also need to demand "transparency".
First, we need transparency in how the $700 billion is spent. We demand to know which bonds are bought, from whom and for how much. Put it on the Internet, please, so people can see exactly which banks get bailouts.
Second, we need financial institutions to become more transparent. When a bank gets in trouble, they always say "We need a bailout! Nobody knows who holds our bad bonds! It’s so scary! It could bring down everything!"
We must now require banks to keep standardized, computerized, detailed files on their holdings and their creditors. When a bank is considered for a bailout, the Feds will pull these all files and check to see how exactly many other banks will actually be affected by a failure. If the number is small the bank gets no bailout.
Lastly, transparency may help us deal with outrageous CEO salaries and bonuses. Shareholders must approve these, but large blocks of shares are held by 401k, hedge, and mutual funds. We must use the Internet to enable individuals to actually vote their shares.
Everyone would be able to go to a Federal website, type in their Social Security number, and every share held in their name can be voted. Votes can also be proxied to activist organizations, if desired. True, the wealthy will still dominate most shareholder votes, but making it easy to participate will get more Americans to pay attention to the madness that is executive compensation.
Congressional Democrats are unlikely to show the spine needed to actually reduce the amount of wealth that is about to get transferred from taxpayers to investors. But we can at least try to get some reforms in place as the price of the bailout...hopefully reforms that will make future abuses somewhat less likely.