Treasury department pledges (your) unlimited assistance to Fannie and Freddie

After the Senate passed its bribery/extortion/porkulus health care bill on Christmas Eve morning, the Obama adminstration sneaked another piece of coal into the stocking of the American taxpayer.  The Washington Post informs us that while much of the country was snowed in trying to complete Christmas preparations, or execute frustrating and/or hazardous holiday travel plans, the Treasury department quietly and unilaterally lifted the cap on federal bailout funds for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

The Obama administration pledged Thursday to provide unlimited financial assistance to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, an eleventh-hour move that allows the government to exceed the current $400 billion cap on emergency aid without seeking permission from a bailout-weary Congress.



The Christmas Eve announcement by the Treasury Department means that it can continue to run the companies, which were seized last year, as arms of the government for the rest of President Obama's current term.


But even as the administration was making this open-ended financial commitment, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac disclosed that they had received approval from their federal regulator to pay $42 million in Wall Street-style compensation packages to 12 top executives for 2009.


The compensation packages, including up to $6 million each to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's chief executives, come amid an ongoing public debate about lavish payments to executives at banks and other financial firms that have received taxpayer aid. But while many firms on Wall Street have repaid the assistance, there is no prospect that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will do so.

Read the whole thing.

I am running out of adjectives here.   And I honestly can't decide which is more surreal.........the arrogance or the hyprocrisy.  One thing is crystal clear:  they do think we are stupid.