Psst! Don't look up and you won't see the sword of Damocles.

Little by little, on "an ad hoc basis", the federal government is pushing its influence over the financial institutions it's bailed out to their logical limits: total control. The linked story, a WSJ account of the extent to which Treasury and the Fed effectively forced Bank of America to fully merge with Merrill Lynch, is evidence that the government has wasted little time in realizing (or, what's worse, only beginning to realize) the potential of its power.