We are so fucked.

Soooo.... How you liking yo' Change™ so far?

In a legal sleight of hand, the New York Federal Reserve -- under Geithner's supervision and in corroboration with then-Secretary Hank Paulson -- established the AIG trust, an ill-conceived and likely unconstitutional arrangement. According to Geithner's scheme, three handpicked government trustees represent taxpayer interests with indemnity from lawsuits and exemptions that allow them to take advantage of business opportunities for personal profit that would otherwise benefit AIG.

A sweetheart deal to be sure. And while it's easy to see how the trust was structured to protect the trustees -- and perhaps the Treasury, in whose interests they are legally compelled to act -- there is almost no protection for the taxpayers who fronted the cash that's keeping AIG afloat.

In fact, provisions of the AIG trust threaten U.S. taxpayers. By tying the trustees' fiduciary duty to the Treasury -- now run by Secretary Geithner -- the risk that short-term political interests will trump long-term financial soundness is intensified.

Moreover, where ordinary trustees are generally prohibited from exploiting investment opportunities that they learn about as a direct result of their responsibilities, the AIG trustees are free to secretly invest their own capital without disclosure.

Finally, Secretary Geithner has ensured the broadest possible indemnity protections for AIG trustees. Ostensibly, the trustees could initiate a clandestine investment plan to pad their own portfolios, appoint directors complicit in the fraudulent scheme, run AIG into the ground while making dollar-for-dollar counterparty payments and leave U.S. taxpayers holding a paper company with no market capitalization and drowning in debt -- all without any legal recourse.

In the end, the bailout of AIG has made U.S. taxpayers more vulnerable, not less. It has established a dangerous precedent for impulsive federal control of private corporations, siphoned off billions of taxpayer dollars and aggravated our economic pain rather than heal it.

Astoundingly, Secretary Geithner recently announced the possibility of structuring a similar bailout trust for Citigroup. If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, I'm afraid the inmates are running the asylum over at the Department of Treasury.

Yet another reason our Creator endowed us with the unalienable right to keep and bear arms.