THE PAULSON PLAN: The financial-reform plan announced by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is better understood as Wall Street's pitiful, lame-duck defense against genuine reform. The confusing bells and whistles do not conceal Paulson's real purpose: to blame the disaster on disorganized government regulators and do little or nothing to restore strong prudential regulation.

The media are making a big fuss, but Bush's ideas for reform are no more credible than Herbert Hoover's promise of "a chicken in every pot." The real reform debate can't start until we have a new President and Congress. Meanwhile, Paulson, a son of Goldman Sachs, seeks to protect fellow club members with distracting proposals. Let the Federal Reserve become the "supercop" of Wall Street. That's a hoot. The Fed is a principal culprit--the bankers' friend--that looked the other way, then showered billions on the failing financiers. What's disturbing is that the Democrats seem disposed to go along. They will be sorry if they do. Putting the Federal Reserve in charge is not reform but surrender. -- WILLIAM GREIDER

BACHELET AND THE PILL: The Chilean Constitutional Tribunal is set to rule on a 2007 lawsuit brought by thirty-six conservative legislators to block President Michelle Bachelet's decision to distribute emergency-contraception pills to women of all income levels. In a Catholic country where abortion is illegal, Bachelet's opponents have seized on the issue to undermine Chile's first female executive.

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