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Look, I hate to say this but isn’t a provision that allows government officials to hide millions of dollars in personal assets one of those things that government officials in corrupt countries do? When Mobutu Sese Soko, for example, lit out for Switzerland, didn’t everybody ask, hey, where’s all that money? Turned out he’d been hiding it for years where he could get it later, didn’t it? Remember Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos? Those shoes didn’t come in cereal boxes. In fact, I seem to recall that every time dictators get deposed, first thing everybody wants to find out is where they put all the money. Sometimes it gets found, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes it just gets spent, often enough on buying a soft place to land. The Bush administration has a problem with this sort of thing, and it isn’t just Cheney and Haliburton; I seem to remember that Paul O’Neill, the former Treasury secretary, came under significant duress for some conflict-of-interest problems he had, until he “voluntarily” acted to resolve the issue. Too late for him, but the next guy could have it made.