The news this morning is sprinkled with gems. On CNBC: "If the tea leaves all start to line together I think this will be the beginning of a major bull market." I can't wait to get home and check my tea leaves in the cupboard and see what they've done while I'm at the office. If I'm lucky, they'll conspire with my Brown Betty and have a cup of tea ready for me by the time I get home tonight. Joseph Stiglitz says:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's plan to wipe up to US$1 trillion in bad debt off banks' balance sheets, unveiled on Monday, offered "perverse incentives", Stiglitz said.

The U.S. government is basically using the taxpayer to guarantee against downside risk on the value of these assets, while giving the upside, or potential profits, to private investors, he said.

"Quite frankly, this amounts to robbery of the American people. I don't think it's going to work because I think there'll be a lot of anger about putting the losses so much on the shoulder of the American taxpayer."

Of course, this transfer of wealth from the middle-class to the wealthy power elite has been the plan all along. But don't take my word on it. The Treasury and the Fed keep reminding us: they control the economy now. And some people called me crazy when I wrote this. Since Eric and I wrote that we've witnessed market engineering on steroids.

Here's Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone: "Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system — transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below."