When Speaker Pelosi stepped to the microphone in the House of Representatives before the vote on the first bailout bill and said, "the party is over," she announced a new brand politics that can deal with the Wall Street meltdown and the Iraq mess as well.

At the moment of her announcement, the United States faced the final collapse of Reaganomics and the wreckage of a thirty-year conservative frenzy to deregulate corporate enterprise. On its knees, Wall Street plead for a massive subsidy to bail out the corporate occupants of the credit and financial markets who had run amok and were too big to fail. Government had to perform resuscitation with 700 billion dollars to prevent the loss of credit availability for Main Street Americans.

Some in Congress asked the appropriate question: "What do the tax payers get for this revival infusion?" The answer others gave was the same answer that had been given in past bailouts: "Paybacks."

Paybacks can consist of the government becoming an equity partner in the dysfunctional enterprise and the beneficiary of its recovery in the market place. Government gets a "subsidization interest" for the capital it infused. If a collapsing company doesn't want the subsidy, fine. It can collapse. If it accepts the subsidy, government gets intramural influence to restructure, dispose of assets, and fire incompetent executives. The government also acquires an enforceable financial stake in the company's future.

Several steps are necessary before we can see how the payback approach can solve the Iraq mess. First, we must dismiss all the liberation, security, victory, battle-ground-of-the-war-on-terror talk of Bush and McCain as a colossal fraud covering an agenda to establish a puppet government to make deals with multinational oil companies. Second, we must cope with our national shame for having sacrificed the lives and wrecked the bodies and minds of young Americans for government-subsidized corporate imperialism in Iraq. Third, we must accept the reality of oil imperialism and inspect it for its problem solving opportunities.

The legal core of Iraq oil imperialism is the proposed Oil & Gas Law that would privatize oil exploitation and grant long term contracts to multinational oil companies. The financial terms of the Oil Law live in Chapter VII entitled "Fiscal Regime" that would obligate multinational oil companies to pay the taxes imposed by the Iraqi laws and a royalty in cash or in kind equal to 12.5% of the "Gross Production measured at the entry flange of the Main Pipeline." The multinationals get the net after payment of those taxes and the royalty.

A President of the United States seeking to end to the war of occupation could ask, "What subsidy payback opportunity does the proposed Oil Law offer American taxpayers and the people of Iraq?"

The possibilities include amending the "Fiscal Regime" to provide that two new entities will receive a significant cut of "Gross Production." One entity could be an Iraqi War Reconstruction Trust administered and distributed in the sole discretion of Iraqi trustees who represent Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish interests. Another entity could be a Subsidy Reimbursement Trust for the American Taxpayers whose cut would payback the billions Americans have spent for the imperial enterprise to date.

The long term Iraqi oil exploitation contracts could be made periodically renewable depending on the multinationals' compliance with their payment obligations to all parties to the contracts. If the companies don't want to take the amended deal, fine. Some other multinational will.

Hopefully American and Iraqi leaders will activate their problem solving creativity and consider the potentials of payback politics to bring at least some economic justice to their countries.