Padmé: [to Bail Organa] So this is how liberty dies… with thunderous applause…

The quote may be over the top, but the overall trend of this administration has been a serious power grab, and no we see that the Feds are moving to increase power in another area:

The Pitch for Expanded Powers: Geithner, Bernanke Seek the Authority to Seize Failing Firms Other Than Banks

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke pressed Congress yesterday to give the federal government unprecedented new power to seize financial firms beyond banks whose collapse could jeopardize the world financial system.

Inside a hearing room crowded with snapping cameras, petulant politicians and pink-clad protesters, the two men pointed to the troubled insurer American International Group as a cautionary tale, offering an ominous account of the global fallout that could have come if the company had collapsed in the fall.

“At best, the consequences of AIG’s failure would have been a significant intensification of an already severe financial crisis and a further worsening of global economic conditions,” Bernanke told the House Financial Services Committee. “Conceivably, its failure could have resulted in a 1930s-style global financial and economic meltdown, with catastrophic implications for production, income and jobs.”

Despite those grave risks, the officials said, the government did not have the power to seize the insurance giant the way that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. can take over banks.

“No legal means existed under U.S. law to resolve AIG using the kind of powers available to the FDIC to resolve a bank,” Geithner said of the federal bailout of AIG in September. “Because of the absence of authority, your government was faced with no good options.”

Not that giving them more power would result in much of anything productive, mind you.  Why would we assume that in taking over the businesses the government would run them any better.

At the rate they are deficit spending, they would end up in the same place…bankrupt.

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