Academic

Washington is easily distracted, and the Blagojevich Whitewater parallels are nothing if not distracting.  So the auto bailout is moving slowly - though the House just said yes, this thing was supposed to be done on Monday.  Still, there's more legal issues to think about.  It's a big subsidy, and subsidies are subject to WTO discipline - discipline that no one may sue over, given the big subsidies other countries have been giving to their own auto manufacturers.  But the constitutional issues are still there - here's Andrew Grossman with the outlines of how you might get a takings claim out of the plan, and Thom Lambert has a more general anti-industrial policy take.  The takings claim is based on the super senior position the government would take - and if that's a taking for this, it must be for AIG and the bank bailouts.  Heck, one would imagine plenty of contract claims for the private debt offerings made so far, so I wonder if the silence on that front is suggestive.