Country First, My Ass
For days, it has been obvious what the GOP dream scenario was- have the bailout pass, but with predominantly Democratic support, dub it the the Bush/Pelosi/Reid/Obama bailout, and then run against it. This is the plan that Gingrich and Ruffini and the other next generation Republicans have been salivating over. This was their big chance. Oops:
The Republican National Committee’s new advertisement critical of the the Wall Street “bailout” was produced and sent to television stations in key states before the package failed, officials at two stations said.
“Wall Street Squanders our money. And Washington is forced to bail them out with — you guessed it — our money. Can it get any worse?” asks the ad’s narrator, as the words “BAILOUT WITH OUR MONEY” cross the screen. (The answer: Obama’s plans would make it worse.)
The ad, however, seems to assume that it can safely attack a successful plan. And the reason may be the timing: Though it started airing this morning, the spot was released to stations yesterday morning, ad executives at stations in Michigan and Pennsylvania said.
Kae Buck of WLNS in Lansing said her station received the at at 7:55 a.m. Monday. Luanne Russell of Pittsburgh’s WTAE said her station received it at 10:49 Monday morning.
Got it? While the Republican Leadership was shaking hands and allegedly rallying their troops to vote for the plan, they were already cutting ads to bash the Democrats. This is why only Republicans in safe seats and leadership positions voted for it. Yesterday, they went out and blamed Pelosi for injecting partisanship into the process, causing the bill to fail, when actually they wanted it to pass so they could… use it against the Democrats. And they were not even hiding it- this was what many online (again, go read the Next Right morons) had openly said they should do, and the commercials were ready to bash the Democrats for passing the plan.
Except the plan failed. And the Republicans are caught red-handed, and will pay the price should things melt down. Not that half the GOP base or the Republican Study Group care- half of them probably think an economic disaster is an alternate route to the Rapture. Not to mention, think of the side benefits- I mean, after all, if everyone is broke, no one can afford contraception or Demon Rum.
The only thing you can count on in politics these days is the sure-fire bet that when the chips are down, the Republicans always, always always put themselves first. These guys need a solid two decades in the minority.
Pelosi failed to sweeten the deal for the GOP by offering special “wide stance” tours of San Francisco for GOP legislators. She lacks leadership, I tell you!
Fixed.
Cursed non-operative strike tags!!!
You get the idea.
No, John, the reason it didn’t pass is because Peolsi couldn’t get enough Dems to pass a Republican President’s bill. Geesh. I mean, when’s the last time the opposing party didn’t carry the water for an unpopular President.
Seriously, that is what I read from some of the wingnuts today. I mean, the stupid…it makes my head hurt.
Only two? How bout three? Or four? Please, daddy, please???
It is time to tag-and-bag the GOP. They’re whigs. It’s time to bury this rotten derelict and let the chamber of commerce, the Christianist extremists, the minutemen and the neocons to each form their own shitty little party.
When I saw that ad this morning on TV shortly after 6am I nearly dropped my coffee. I knew there was no way it was not cut yesterday or before, almost certainly before the vote. Words fail me in describing how reckless the Republicans are.
This is totally surprising to me. The last few decades had taught me that the Republican Party was the most honorable, patriotic, trustworthy institution in American life. I am crushed.
Hee hee.
Damn, SGEW beat me to the punch. I would go even further and say that the Republicans have committed treason, and that there are more than two witnesses necessary to send these guys to the death chamber.
BTW, love the new format, although trying to read 400 comments is taking time away from work. Everyone stop being do damn interesting and insightful!
Holy Premature Character Assasination Batman! The Joker has struck again!
Wow. Just.
Wow.
strikeYou need to enter it by hand using “del”, I think.
It works in preview, let’s see if it works in the
realonline world!Were they aboard the Titanic, they would be dressed in drags holding a stuffed doll clamoring for a seat on the lifeboats.
Norma Rae says:
strike!So that was what McCain was doing. He did not go to Washington to save the bailout, but to coordinate killing it.
Now is the time for Obama to stick the shiv between McCain’s ribs – blame him for the failure, the mendacity, the whole megillah, from deregulation to ignoring the crisis to going behind the president’s back to murder the bailout. If Obama handles this right the GOP is going to get crushed.
Yeah, use [del] and [/del] around what you want to be stricken. Substitute angle brackets for the square brackets.
I don’t understand the ins and outs of campaign finance laws, but isn’t the RNC putting out an ad that attacks Obama and no one else a no-no?
I can’t wait for this to blow up in the Republican’s faces with the American electorate who are being told of course by the media that the Palin-Biden debate is what everyone is REALLY waiting for.
It does work!
i plan to live at least another five-six decades, so let’s make it for after that, ok?
GOP 2071!
Seriously, “two decades in the minority”? No, this elephant is dead and rotting, and the smell is choking the country. For the good of political opposition, bury the corpse of this freakshow, get the honest conservatives back into a new party, and have them deploy trained snipers to pick off the Norquist-style sh*tbirds if they ever get within 500 yards of the new party meetings.
D
Actually what they need is to be completely ripped apart at the seams, their coalition thrown to the wind, and a functional conservative party be built in their place.
I used to think that the GOP was salvageable as a political party – not any more. They’re a total disaster and do a disservice to conservatives with their antics. They need to disappear completely and let a decent opposition party rise in their place.
Or hell, let the Democrats move slightly rightward, become the new conservative party and have a new opposition party show up on the left. I don’t really care at this point – the Republican Party needs to disappear and be reconstituted into something healthy for the Republic instead of the toxic poison they’ve become over the last few decades.
THAT body? In THAT trunk? In MY car? Surely office you don’t think that I….
I have to admit that while I think I’m much more informed on economics than the average American (maybe even above the 80th percentile) … the details of this stuff make my head hurt. I end up retreating to first principles, and I’m in conflict. No, I don’t want to see credit dry up and kill off job creation. No, I don’t want to see the US dollar turned into toilet paper as the financiers we bail out diversify their portfolios into gold and euros.
But the politics makes it a slam dunk for me. If the recession gets worse, it gets blamed on Bush. If we pump a lot of money into the system and it doesn’t do enough to stop the bleeding, but makes a bunch of financiers a big chunk of money, it gets blamed on the Democrats in Congress.
Also, I do fear the effects of ultra-hyperinflation more than depression. It seems that countries that run into hyperinflation mode end up invariably turning power over to authoritarians. We’ve got enough of that already.
Nope, McCain actually wanted to pass the bill too, but he wanted the democrats to have to come to it’s rescue by providing additional votes. What the republicans wanted was for 3/4 of the dems to vote for it while only 1/3 of the republicans to vote for it. When the dems didn’t play the game, the republican plan crashed and this morning’s tv ads pull the mask off that hypocricy.
The ad attacks the Democrats in Congress too. The GOP would never waste an opportunity like this to bash every Democrat in sight. If the Obama campaign doesn’t get an ad out there “outing” the nasty tactics of the Repugs, the DNC ought to do one. This disgusting cynicism has to be exposed to all voters, including the LIVs.
Campaign suspension loop, engage!
Also, what NonyNony said.
Hey, how about a few more viable political parties in Congress while we’re at it?
If the Greens keep popping up every 4 years and demanding the keys to AirForce1 I’m going to give each and every one of them a kick the junk.
Well, at this point I say the Dems write a new nationalization bill, like what Reich and Krugman have in mind. Shove it through, force Bush to sign it.
If the GOP is going to attack the Dems for anything that gets produced, they might as well make it a bill that they want.
I’m reasonably certain that they’ll craft a new bill. If the Dems have to pass it by themselves then it should include some Democratic goodies. Including this:
The ad would have been attacking the Democrats in Congress if they had passed the bailout, but since they didn’t … how do you see this ad as attacking them?
The one out that the McCain campaign has on this is that no one could seriously contend that the RNC message is “coordinated” with the campaign. More like: left hand, right hand, no clue.
I honestly don’t know if this bill should pass or not, but regardless of where one stands we desperately need adults in power.
That’s reasonable (certainly more so than a few years). Anything can happen in two decades; maybe the next generation of Republicans will learn from their forbear’s mistakes.
Sweetheart, I will spend my last nickel on Demon Rum.
On the plus side, it’s sounding like they’re actually embarrassed by their earlier claims they voted against the bill because of Pelosi’s speech. Baby steps.
Amazing that these people keep getting elected. Aeffingmazing.
Funny how that happened. Pelosi is usually pretty good about getting her troops to toe the line. You’d think she could have twisted the arms of twelve of the 95 Democratic hold-outs. And yet… here we are.
Part of me wants to give Pelosi points for political jujitsu. Part of me wants to assume that there are 95 Democrats out there with enough integrity to spit in the face of this rich man’s welfare. Most of me wishes people would stop dicking around with politics and actually address the credit squeeze.
It is nice to see the GOP fall on its face once again. More bad news is more bad news for incumbents this year. At the same time, I wish people didn’t have to stare the lion in the tonsils before they decide its time to change directions.
TPM has great video up today from Morning Joe’s segment on MSNBC in which Rep. Shadegg basically puts Boehner’s crap about Pelosi’s speach being the cause of the bill’s failure to rest.
Sounds like Republicans are just running around like chickens with their heads cut off today…
This is like that time I tried to blame the missing Hershy’s bar on my sister with chocolate all over my face.
Why would it be? The RNC isn’t a 527, much less a 501(c )(4). The RNC is showing the pointlessness of the current public financing system, because McCain’s acceptance of public financing doesn’t limit him at all. People can just give to the RNC (with much higher limits than giving to McCain’s campaign) and the RNC can do the exact same things the McCain campaign would have done with the money.
To be fair, it looks like the commercial is explicitly attacking Obama’s spending plans rather than the bail out (which the government is “forced” to do). After spending hundreds of billions of dollars on vitally important banks, it would sure be a travesty to spend money on useless stuff like health care or infrastructure.
Considering that investors on Wall Street now have to be a bit more careful about where their donations go, and the GOP chose yesterday to bite the hand that feeds them, chickens with their heads cut off is a metaphor that’s not far off the mark.
GOP behavior during this crisis provides a concrete definition-by-example of “ass clown”.
The Dow is up 302 at the moment. What time is McCain’s speech claiming credit for that?
It’s all part of the gathering narrative being pushed not just by conservatives but by “responsible” moderates. Republicans come in and propose massive tax cuts aimed at the rich and no one raises an eyebrow because times are good, and so on. Then when they’ve ruined the economy and ballooned the national debt and a Democrat comes in, you’re not “serious” unless you admit that of course we can’t afford frills and unnecessary luxuries like health care. And on it goes. The trouble is, liberals like myself who used to listen to this kind of talk have gotten screwed once too often, and are not prepared to be reasonable anymore. If we’re really going into a recession or worse, that’s the time we’re going to need government intervention more than ever before, and if we could easily afford trillions of dollars of tax cuts, a trillion dollar war, and a trillion dollar bail out for wall street, well, how can the people who enabled this mess tell us with a straight face we’re being irresponsible when we talk about spending on health care and infrastructure?
True, but in the context of a presidential campaign, the success of this strategy depends upon the trust the electorate has in the messenger. Most people who aren’t idiots (i.e., anyone other than the vaunted “undecideds”) know that a clearly partisan source has motivation to lie to you.
That was the appeal of 527s.
I dunno. I think what you saw yesterday was evidence of a serious power struggle in the Republican Party. According to reports on Morning Joe, Gingrich was lobbying Repubs to vote against the bill, while Bonehead was asking them to vote for it. What it seems to me is that they are going to cede this election, get rid of the old guys this election, come back in 2010 with as many new GOPAC guys as they can find, and position themselves for a Gingrich run for President in 2012. Basically, bring back the radical conservatives or the 80’s.
Yesterday was just the first public shots in the campaign.
Yeah, if you listen to it real carefully, but most people do not and I think they will be left with the impression that the bailout is a Democratic plan. I saw the ad twice this morning and it was only the second time when I really listened carefully and parsed it that I realized they never really do say the bailout is a Dem plan.
I notice that many of the talking heads with “money expertise” say this is because Wall Street has faith that Congress will come through, but there are whispers from dark corners that this uptick is really just the result of vultures picking the bones clean.
Two hours after the market closes at -150.
Dead cat bounce.
Yeah, that Country First slogan from the start has pissed me off. Coming from these guys with their Party of Bush history.
In the 06 midterms if you didn’t vote Republican, you were a Nazi appeaser. McCain using the same theme, just a little more subtle and nuanced. Updated, maybe now you’d be a Putin peaser if you don’t vote McMaverick. Then you see this kind of ad prepared in advance that shows the true colors of their flag lapel pins. Country = McCain + party in mavericky math.
Pelosi was trying to get a (real, not Repub) bipartisan bill through, to cover Dem asses in the election. They could have probably twisted a few more arms, but Bonehead said that he had 70-80 votes. The Dems had enough cushion to cover that, so Pelosi brought the bill to the floor. The “Newt” faction in the House fucked Bonehead over. That’s why Shaddaq was saying this morning that Bonehead lied. That was intended to embarrass bonehead.
They have reminded me more of Federalists than Whigs. Pro-business, pro-country only so far as the country supports their interests. REady to everybody out for the interests of Capital.
Most Whigs were opposed to the Mexican-American war, so they don’t deserve to be smeared by comparison to the imperialist GOP.
Off the rocks before it falls farther. The real indicator today is LIBOR rates and other credit spreads. This cost of money is WAY up, and NOBODY is lending.
Forget the DOW, the real action (or lack of it) is in the credit markets.
Gingrich screwing over Boehner seems implausible, as he doesn’t even have a stalking horse in Congress. The Republicans likely balked for a combination of ideological and electoral reasons. Passing this bill could hurt incumbunts running in close elections, and there are far more Republicans in that situation than Democrats.
John, did you see the update over at Politico?
Like you said, you can’t even spoof these guys anymore.
Country Club First!
Who knew watching an Elephant try to pirouette could be so much fun?
Obama nailed it in his acceptance speech when he said (paraphrasing) that Republicans need to own the consequences of their “Ownership Society”. It is their policies that have, do, and will continue to contribute to this meltdown.
The only problem with that is that the radical conservatives booted Gingrich back in the 80s because he’d betrayed the conservative ideals. I know — I was one of the ones booting him.
Whether the peeps — the ones still listening to Rush and agreeing with him — will remember their dislike of Newty is a real question.
Where’s a place on can look at this?
This was the real issue yesterday. It remains the real issue today. Why this doesn’t appear to be sinking in is a mystery. The credit markets are still blinking bloody goddamn red.
Does this ad make any damned sense to anyone? It seems to just be a Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac/Obama stream-of-consciousness piece with a dose of Bill Clinton thrown in. Will it actually convince anyone to vote for McCain?
CNBC
People have been taught to fixate on the DJIA. They haven’t been educated on the other things that make up the economy, and except for CNBC (and a short segment on CNN) no one is taking about it. One of the bad things about this crisis is that it has been cast in terms of a bailout, and everyone immediately thinks of giving money to wall street fat cats.
I think people could get it, if there was more info made available, and we could get off this bailout narrative.
Thank you.
I expect the info will become available when people find out that they can’t get a loan, or that their employer can no longer afford to pay them. That kind of message is hard to ignore.
So why not pour some cheap money into the credit markets? The bailout plan seems an attempt to pour a ton of money onto the top of the rickety structure of CDO’s, etc., in the hope that some of it makes it down to the places where it’s needed.
Hey Trolls! I’m getting an error message that the disk is full when I try to send an email. When is Congress going to do something about this!?
1
This message has been secretely encoded to protect the guilty [back]
My gut response: ineffective. Clinton’s words there appear to be pretty disconnected from the rest of the piece. It doesn’t flow, and McCain looks like a little mini-me the way they’re moving him around in the frame.
It’s purpose is to take the bad paper off the books in the hopes that this will restore trust in the paper in general.
This morning on NBC, they had that woman over from CNBC (Maria something) talking to one of their anchors. It was an interesting moment of cognitive dissonance. The anchor kept asking about the DOW, people’s 401ks, etc, and she kept talking about the credit markets. I was happy to see her do that, but kind of astonished that her words weren’t registering.
Crash, huh?
Seems that when things crash, they crash all over the place.
Today at Kos, there’s a report that an Alaska troopergate witness (Wilkes) has flipped. Look for this to come to the MSM on Thurs AM. Debate later. HA!
So…about the “crash”.
OK, it’s my fault.
yes, you heard me. IT’S MY FAULT!
See, I borrowed a bunch of money on my credit cards to fund a couple of “wars” that needed to be fought because all the nice ‘Merkins were skeered after 9-11. They needed revenge for the blood that came down in the towers. They were soooo skeered they even took off their shoes at airports.
Well folks, my credit cards are maxxxxxxxxxed now. It’s ALL my fault.
There’s no further need for the pResident to blame Congress, McShame to blame Obama, Bohner to blame Pelosi, nor Barney to blame the sensitive.
It’s MY fault.
I’ll take my punishment on behalf of the “sins” committed by everyone.
My only request before I’m nailed to the side of the Goldman Sachs building, is that you remember me by drinking symbolic blood (401 funds) and eating lots of lettuce (this is my body, it is dollar bills).
You’ll feel better.
I TAKE THE BLAME.
Two decades In the minority? No. Permanent minority is more like it.
Conservative governance in our modern world is bad, period. It leads, inevitably, to the problems endemic to laissez faire capitalism (too-obvious for instance: the current credit crisis) as well as authoritarian rule (unitary executive, empire-building, police state, stupid wars, etc.).
Good governance requires that conservatives, as a strong minority, provide the necessary brake on progressive/liberal plans and proposals for government. The whole “wait, let’s think about this first and not be too hasty/ who’s gonna pay for this?/ our tradition has always been…” thing that is a hallmark of true conservative thinking. Prudence, and all that.
Conservatives should run banks and auto companies, with just enough forward-thinking (“liberal”) risk-taking and entrepreneurial-spirit to keep things fresh and moving.
Liberals should run government, providing, among other things, the rules and regs needed to keep a close eye on those bankers, auto company execs, etc., thus preventing laissez faire from wreaking its havoc. We need just enough conservatives around government to keep the commies from taking over.
Pelosi didn’t WANT any more democrats to sign on to the bill. She did everything that the bi-partisan agreement ask of the congressional democrats. She provided enough votes to pass the bill if the republicans would have delivered the votes that their leadership had said they would supply. Pelosi knew this was a double-cross and tried to force the republicans to keep their side of the deal by not adding any more democratic votes. The republicans didn’t and the bill failed.
Ahhh, but it has been my understanding that these two items are relatively cheap compared to say purchasing big screen HD televisions, and as such, they will be considered the first and most important forms of entertainment. When people are struggling, they still want and will shop for vices to get them through.
Nobody liked Newt much in the 90s, what the hell makes him think that he could get elected president in 2012?
Yeesh. I guess a politician would not be a politician if they didn’t possess ambition, but still… he is nuts to think anybody but the base would vote for him!
dslak @ 54
dslak @ 64
Yep. Unfortunately, when it gets that far along, there’ll probably be no way to stop it.
dennis – sgmm @ 65
As I understand it, the problem with credit is that banks have a high ratio of debt to assets. Mark to market rules have forced writedowns of questionable assets to basically worthless, since there is no market value for that paper. That means that there is less money available for credit lending, becuase the banks still have to cover their debt. The idea behind the bailout is to purchase that questionable paper, which does have some value, to get it off the books of the banks so that the banks can lend again. That’s the method that dumps the money into the credit markets and stops the deflationary spiral that banks a going through.
The idea is to take pressure off the banks, the auction the questionable paper off to determine it’s value, and recoup part of the bailout moeny that way.
Problem is, without the bailout, the SEC ans Wall Street will come up with some plan like getting rid of mark to market rules, which will keep this crap in the system. We’ll have the same old problem, it’ll just put the blow-up date further out.
Do you think they are hoping that, like David Copperfield, they can just make that bad debt vanish into thin air? That debt still ends up somewhere, unpaid, the problem DOESN’T go away.
I can’t believe anyone could be this stupid. Yes, I have full faith in the stupidity of Americans, but I hoped they had a bit more knowledge than to think that debt just goes away. ARGH!
Does anyone know how the bill failed then? Did Democrats start voting against it once they realized what the Republicans were doing?
SHHHH! Don’t discourage him!
I’ve been replaying the classic PC RPGs Fallout and Fallout 2. I’ve just now realized that they are teaching me life skills that I may need in the very near future, especially barter.
I’ve been saving up bottlecaps. Now I just need to find some stimpaks…
Who could have guessed they were up to this? :-)
The idea is to use price-discovery methods (auctions, etc) to determine a FMV for the paper. It’s not all worthless (most people still pay their mortgages), it’s just that the method that was used to value it came down bascially to someone picking a number out of the air. Mark to market rules came along, and since the paper didn’t result from a market transaction, accounting rule values the paper at $0. So mark to market rules say the paper is worth nothing (clearly undervalued), the bank had it on its books at some nominal value, and the result is that no one knows what it’s really worth.
Problem is that without some way to purge these questionable assets from the books (ie, some bailout plan), the SEC and the market will jusr resort to changing the rules, deregulating even more by getting rid of mark to market, and well be putting fresh paint over a big pile of shit.
They had it, after the Depression–more, in fact. Fat lot of good it did them.
Scrutinizer, I’m not denying that Gingrich opposed the bill, just that I don’t think he had that much pull when it came to its failure. I’m sure he’d like to think that he does, and no doubt some in the GOP are looking for a leader to rally to other than Boehner, and Newt will do in a pinch.
Since he’s not even in Congress however, I wouldn’t expect anybody there to kowtow to him for very long.
Wait, I’m confused. Yesterday it was made clear on these pages that the sense of the blog was that the failure was a good thing. Fuck Wall Street, fuck the people who “got us into this mess,” burn it all down, yippee, the more it fails, the better.
Now we are saying, the failure was a bad thing? That it was all just political theater? Well so what? If we hurt the fat cats, if we yell “off with their heads,” isn’t that just fine?
So what if tens of millions of moms and pops lose their shirts? So what if there is no liquidity in the credit and banking systems because everyone is paralyzed wondering what the fuck is going on? Chaos is good, right?
Why the pearl clutching today? I don’t get it. Isn’t this what everyone wanted?
No, the fact is that congress’ inability to get this done, apparently because it is politically bound to a great pissing contest over appearances and voter manipulations, is hurting not just “the country” but the ordinary people IN the country, and for that matter, around the world.
And while I am not particularly proud of the Democrats’ failure to see how they were being set up and to make goddam sure that the thing was passed before making the assholish speeches, the fact is, it’s the Republicans who are gaming this crisis for their own purposes at this point, and the only thing good about it is that they don’t appear to be getting away with it.
AFAIC, she fucked up.
And Fallout 3 is coming out soon, so we can all learn some new skills.
I’m wondering what this will mean for interest rates…anybody know?
I don’t think Fallout 3 will have a whole lot of effect on interest rates, but if it does, I don’t think it will matter much, we’ll be mostly dead then anyway.
Want to see a complete disassociation from all reality? RedState has a brilliant plan to salvage the financial sector by bringing special leadership to Congress, and save the Country First McCain campaign all in one package. How? Let Sarah be Sarah! From the frontpage minds of RS…
Memo to McCain Camp: Washington Has Failed. Send in Gov. Palin.
I kept expecting a punchline; there was none. The Onion weeps seeing superior material.
That’s what I get for holding multiple thoughts in my head at one time.
I was talking about this particular financial shitstorm. I’m just wondering if anybody has any intelligent predictions on what it might mean for lending rates.
There is no such thing as a safe seat, there are only re-election risk currently deferred seats. Those seats still come up for re-election in 2 or 4 years. Let us never forget.
TZ fail.
I’m all for it. Let’s get her on a plane now! ;)
There is only one sure bet in today’s politics – Polesi will do the wrong and extremely stupid thing. First, second and third support bushwhack at all cost. Fourth, help bushwhack get a bill, any bill he wants, passed. Finally, screw even that up trying to do what bushwhack wants.
What morons voted for that loser must also think bushwhack is a good president.
AFAIC, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. People were saying that handing investors unlimited sums of money is a bad plan, and I think they are right–I have no confidence that handing Paulson money will do anything lasting towards this crisis. However, people have been floating numerous other proposals to help inject liquidity into the markets while still not rewarding the risky investements that caused the crisis. All of these numerous other proposals that you happily whistle past in your inane ranting insults, and are now royally pissed that the Democrats didn’t neatly walk into this trap–of course, if they had and the Dems had lost the election from the populist backlash against this plan, you’d have started bitching about that.
w vincentz at 70: I’d wait a bit before popping the champagne corks on that “troopergate witness flips” story. My heart skipped a beat when I saw the headline, because the Worker’s Comp. denial is clearly the nerve center of the whole case. But the diary is by a known flake, and the only link supporting the claims is to another story on another site, by the same flake. There’s nothing in the Anchorage daily mail, or on Halcro’s site, or on Mudflats. So the glorious feeling vanished. So, unless something tangible appears, I am currently in a “Badger fan after the Michigan game” level of disappointed expectation.
All day I keep thinking of that tragic weatherman from the muppets (or was it Sesame Street?) who would say something like, “Barometers are falling, sharply!” and then get pelted over the head by dozens of wooden barometers. Don’t know why that seems relevant, it just does.
I have no idea if the rescue failing was a good thing or a bad thing. I tend to think hat there needs to be a plan to free up the credit markets, but this is all so over my head that I honestly do not know. People I tend to trust seem to think something needs to be done.
That having been said, I understand the suspicion. Read Greenwald yesterday about the ten ways this bailout/rescue plain mirrored the way things have been done the last eight years.
On the other hand, it is CRYSTAL CLEAR the Republicans are just playing games with this shit.
Two different subjects Watson. And the sense of the blog was that MAYBE the plan won’t fix the underlying problem and end up being good money (aLOT) going down the rabbit hole, lost forever and we’d be back at it again in the near future. And please don’t bleed your heart about all us cruel progressive bloggers shitting on the little people and not as caring about them as you, Your most worried about your own goddamn fiscal hide, IMO. Christ, your sounding more like Wilfred every day.
Even if they took the good paper and the bad paper and separated them into piles of good and bad, there is still bad (granted, re-ordering the paper would make the good debt fly again, but the bad debt would still be there, where does it go? Do they just hold it perpetually?)
Blockquotes messed up. Not me, I’m sure
Okay, I double checked to make sure I blockquoted the entire original post – this is a problem with this new system. The close blockquote tag ended up in a different place than where I just placed it.
HTML code is making intelligent (or not so) decisions? Hmmmmm.
As clear as an unmuddied lake, sir. As clear as an azure sky of deepest blue.
My new favorite book:
The Home Distillation Handbook
That may work – I have no idea. It will take time, maybe weeks and months. Banks are holding on to their cash and refusing to lend to each other now. Businesses that rely on Christmas for a big part of their profits are probably wanting short-term loans now. Or is this a faith-based initiative that assumes that as long as it looks as though something is being done about the structural problems credit will suddenly free up?
No, he’s worried about mine. He’s not worried all that much about his at all. TZ is the kind of guy who, when I warned him of financial markets failing 6 months ago, looked at me and said “I’m not all that concerned”.
Not really, that is the entire “don’t buy the shit, just have the government buy preferred shares” theory of doing it comes in, which at this point is the only plan I could support. And at that the government should only do it in entities that the entities failure would cause a risk to the system. The only reason the bad debt is a problem is becuase the companies holding it may not have sufficent capital to take a hit.
After reading tons of blogs, I still don’t know the right answer, although it’s clear the vote was playing politics. My congressman, Pete DeFazio, is a liberal dem who voted against it and had this in this morning’s local paper explaining.
Things are beginning to look like Rome Again, CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII.
As clear as an azure sky of deepest
bluesummer.Argh. Shouldn’t try to pull quotes from memory.
me too
My friend, you wouldn’t be so amazed, should you ever have the unfortunate experience of visiting Mississippi, TN, or Indiana. You’ll look at your calander and SWEAR you just went 50 years back in time. In some places in MS, it’ll probably feel like a 148 yr. leap backwards.
Don’t they both say the same thing?
By the way, somebody upthread had asked for a link to LIBOR. This rate spread is also important. Historically it is 50 basis points (0.5%). The spread is the difference between LIBOR and the 3m T-bill.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/......TEDSP:IND
Let me interject a quick note for folks who may have missed it in previous (long) comment threads: yes, the blockquote function is not working as it should. To get around the problems with the function and the templates not working together (just like Congress!), either create new blockquotes where you would have a space between grafs, like this:
Or insert ellipses into the space to keep the single block intact:
I know syntactically ellipses are supposed to denote something removed from the original item you’re quoting, but let’s be flexible, eh?
Thanks.
Do you think they are hoping that, like David Copperfield, they can just make that bad debt vanish into thin air? That debt still ends up somewhere, unpaid, the problem DOESN’T go away.
Well, actually, a lot of the issue seems to be these credit default swaps, which are in the most basic form an insurance policy. If this was nothing but mortgage backed securities you’re right – they’d be no issue because even if you lent someone 110% of the cost of their house and it then dropped to 70% of what it was worth before you’d at least be able to get back 70% of 10/11th of your loan. [I know that’s hard to parse but it’s not my fault you didn’t pay attention in algebra]
Instead there’s a tremendous amount of these CDSes floating around which are backed by Jack and his brother Shit. Here’s an excellent article on the Freakanomics blog (if you’re willing to spend the hard time reading it AND reading the linked articles that explain some of the more esoteric terms) that gives you some idea of the problem. Here’s an example of the way this issue cascades:
Got that? AIG issues a bunch of bonds, based on a variety of things. They also create a bunch of these CDSes for other people’s bond offerings. If they pay out on the CDSes they might not be able to service their bonds. Which makes some other company obligated to pay out on the CDSes they wrote against AIG’s bonds. Which potentially leaves them unable to service their bonds……
So we can see how these esoteric instruments – which the Freakonomics writers imply were badly constructed – which have no backing. This is more akin to your paying health insurance premiums for years and when you have to go for a general checkup finding that your company can’t pay.
What I’m not personally clear on in this is why the government plan can’t simply purchase up these CDS insured bonds and thereby make the CDSes worthless, removing the problem. However my understanding of these instruments and the situation is amazingly limited. The problem is that I don’t know how any of us can trust the advice of people who are players in this game. We need haircut advice but it seems like only barbers have the ability to provide us the analysis.
Or perhaps not. We’re hearing from a lot of economists saying that this plan wasn’t a winner and they don’t seem poised to gain directly. However I bet not a single one of their employers ever wrote a congresscritter a single campaign contribution, so I feel pretty certain about who is more likely to get listened to.
Why would Pelosi want to force passage of an awful bill, one that the majority of this country opposes – one so bad that the Republicans are begging us to pass it, as they know they can hang it around our necks for decades to come?
Why would Pelosi, or any Speaker, possibly do such a thing?
She handled this properly. The Republicans promised her votes and then reneged. If this abortion of a bill is to be passed – and IMO it shouldn’t be – then it must be bipartisan. If the Republicans want to play games with it, well, too bad for America. When they want to act like adults and not throw monkeywrenches into so-called “important legislation”, the door is open for them to do so.
Wilfred was stupid. TZ isn’t, and knows better than to behave like this.
Bit by the blockquote bug! The above block should look like:
Thank you Annette that is a good suggestion. So we DO have intelligent code? WOW!
The Fed Reserve (a private company!) just cut 600 billion dollars (damn, they even run the mint!)to banks to free up credit. So, even without congress the fat cats got much of what they wanted. F the American people and congress.
When will we get rid of a bank corp that owns the US economy/mint/tax money and most of our riches and pays ‘special private’ owners a 6% div and many are not citizans? And we can not buy the special stock nor learn any details about these secret owners nor really even have a say in a company that runs our country?!
Well, whether congress passes the bill or not, the American tax payer just provided (in paper money) the crdit they demanded and we just got hooked for.
Don’t assume any such thing, I was an Algebra tutor in college.
I know, but I don’t want to let TZ know that.
One thing I haven’t heard mentioned anywhere is eminent domain. This would certainly seem to qualify as a “public good” situation. I don’t know how that would be applied, or what exactly would be seized, but it seems this emergency warrants at least considering it’s use.
Isn’t that illegal? Doesn’t Congress have to approve all expenditures?
In a wind-up Sarah Palin doll sort of way: the programmer crams the code with how they want it to look and hope when someone sets it off it comes out ok on the other end. As we all know, it doesn’t always work out that way when interacting with the real world.
I have already stated here recently that I sold all my stocks a month ago and converted the funds to cash and gold shares. I decided to take some time off from the stock game.
Was I prescient, or lucky? Well, who knows, but I had a bad feeling about the equities market, or maybe it was just gas? Or an undercooked burger? Hard to tell at my age.
But my beef here has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the potstirrers here who act as if Epic Fail on a large financial scale is good because, you know, those rotten rich people are to blame. Sorry, it’s the little people who always get fucked over, and this “bailout” is a lot more about helping them than it is about helping fat cats. Fat cats find a way to stay fat.
Secy Paulson doesn’t need the money, he will be a rich man no matter what happens here.
I do believe that hidden amidst the helpful blockquoting instructions, Annette was…what’s that word again, Sarah Palin?…MOCKING the gravity and importance of BJ commenting.
Bush: “I have seized America under eminent domain. It’s for your own good. For the rest of my life I will rule you all as capably as I have for the past eight years.”
Shygetz wrote,
For some reason, ThymeZone is incapable of understanding that.
Cole didn’t drop 8 gunge for ellipses, dammit. I dont even know what the hell an ellipsis is, fer christ’s sake.
This is why the tinfoil hat/militia/bunker/Ron Paul/trailer park/Alex Jones crowd have such an issue with the Federal Reserve in the first place; they can “spend” without Congressional oversight. They aren’t a government agency.
It isn’t illegal.
Let me be the first to welcome Comrade Annette!
Both wrong. What’s left of the GOP is more a toxic sludge of Copperheads and Know-Nothings.
The Fed is authorized to print money, literally, and that is what they are doing and then offering it via the Fed’s window (or whatever they call it) to the banks as sweatheart rates. When you can spin money out of thin air the whole concept of “budget” goes out the window. The US Government, by the way, can not print its own money (except for coinage). When the US Government deficet spends my understanding is that it is not by printing money but they actually go into the markets and borrow.
I guess my problem is that as I see it, if any money is exchanged to purchase bad debt by the government, they can’t just disappear that bad debt. Perhaps half of what’s in those instruments are gold and the other half is shit, the shit is not going to go away, it’s still shit. Even if it gets tacked on to the national debt as money that will never be repaid, it’s still money and it’s still a shitty instrument. Am I just not getting this? How does someone take shit and turn it into gold? I’d like to have that recipe, I produce shit just about every day.
Oh, I was thinking it was by other means. Okay, thanks. ;)
[…] to beat them with. The House Republicans clearly wanted the bill to pass without their support so they could go back home and run against it. Just enough Democrats hated the bill to not let that happen, so now the GOP is stuck looking […]
They aren’t questionable. They’re actually good assets in many cases. And it’s not like the banks want to sell them, they want the income that comes off of them, but they can’t price to model, they have to price to market. If the market won’t buy, then the assets are deemed worthless even while they are paying fine. That doesn’t mean they are bad and the homeowners aren’t paying, it just means that nobody will buy them. Now, if the bank is trying to sell them, that’s one thing – and it should say something about the bank. But if the bank is holding them, then why are they suffering through asset devaluation?
What we need to remember is that unlike many assets which only derive value when you sell them, loans have value even when you don’t provided the loan isn’t in default – which the vast majority of loans aren’t.
The real question becomes – how do you value that loan? If not market prices, then how. That’s part of what Paulson needed to work out under his proposal and part of what we need to solve as a long-term remedy to this problem.
Don’t those magically-printed dollars dilute the value of all dollars and dollar-denominated assets? That might not be a Good Thing considering that part of the problem is restoring faith in the American economy.
I was well acquainted with the antics of the Know-Nothings and always felt that was an apt comparison to the GOP, but had only heard of the Copperheads – thanks for the link! Wow!
This could have come right out of Limbaugh/Beck/Savage/Hannity’s mouth (and did come out of Hannity’s buddy Hal Turner’s mouth and got him in some hot water with the Secret Service):
Say that shit today and you’ll be getting a 4AM wakeup call from the Secret Service, and get to go for a ride in the partyvan.
Alright, what the fuck does this mean? This is bad, right? I mean, how could this not be bad?
<img src=”http://blogs.cfr.org/setser/files/2008/09/fed-balance-sheet.JPG” alt=”OMG H4X” />
From here.
Indeed she could.
I don’t normally like Pelosi much, but I think she was masterful here – she did what she said she was going to to, walked up right to the edge, and said, after you.
In other words, she didn’t blink. And I thank her for that.
No Im not, you horse’s ass. But it doesn’t matter what “other proposals” are out there.
What matters is what can be passed by Congress, now. That is what matters, and that is the only thing that matters. Doing nothing is not acceptable, and staring into your navel and dreaming of “other propsals” is not useful.
You are apparently incapable of understanding that, or else we are in agreement, one or the other.
It was all of those emails I forwarded you shouting out impending warnings of doom. ;)
I’ll take payment in the form of… nevermind, we’ll talk about it.
[…] has been shined on the Republican Party in Congress. Average Americans can now clearly see that the John McCain and his friends at the Republican National Committee played politics with their retirement funds and college savings. People are saying that they will […]
@ KKR
Moi? Mock something? Surely you jest (and I’ll call you Shirley all I want). Everyone’s all full of piss and vinegar as usual since the site was relocated to the new server and we just wouldn’t want any quote-related misunderstandings to interfere with the actual insults and rhetoric being thrown back and forth, would we?
@ Punchy
Not to me, he didn’t. I’m not the designer, just the server monkey holding everything together. I work for peanuts. Or bananas. Whatever.
Scrutinizer for the win.
If this reporting is accurate, Newt was actively — actively, mind you — sabotaging the negotiations. Now, if this will come back to haunt him in 2012 is anyone’s guess, but it’s sure to piss off some important folks in the GOP (such as it is).
Heh, that would be poetic, if it werent’ for the fact that she cannot actually blink, from what I can see.
But that aside, what she did was to declare victory before the votes were tallied and walked us all into a big fucking trap. AFAIC she deserves to lose her speakership for it.
Yup. I forget who said it, Big Media Matt or summat, but I’m glad to be an adult and take ahit when it’s necessary, as long as there are people on the other side willing to take it with me. But if you’re going to act like a fucking douchenozzle, then we can all go down together motherfuckers.
What about the Dems that supported this, particularly members of the congressional black caucus? Many of the congressional black caucus members are in safe districts, hell – Hank Johnson, from GA’s 4th district, doesn’t even have a challenger from the GOP. His office is saying that he didn’t want to bail out “Wall St.” If he was part of some nefarious Democratic effort to sabotage the bill and put blame on the GOP, that’s cool, but I honestly think he’s too much of a fucking dumb-ass to take part in something like that. More likely he thought his “low info” constituency, the ones out in the Atlanta suburbs who are getting foreclosed on (i.e. his black supporters) would balk at his support of the bail out. He was wrong. Most of those folks don’t even know what fucking district they live in. His in-town constituency, the ones who see that Wall St. and Main Street are inextricably linked, the ones who go out every weekend to get the low info folks registered and ready to vote for Obama are pissed and rightly so. I guess we’ll just have to find a new replacement in 2010. It won’t be hard – it’s pretty easy for the in-town, hi-info folks to swamp the primaries once their blood is up. When Cynthia McKinney forgot who she worked for, we dumped her ass, and now we’ll do the same to ‘ol Hank.
I don’t agree with this, sorry. I think there may indeed be better ways to manage this. Some are talking about the Swedish plan. The problem is, if Congress won’t look at other proposals, we’re screwed.
Well, they had an impact, no doubt about that. Thank you.
Piss and vinegar? I see sweetness and light, this is nothing compared to how it was before the site move. OMG, I was posting “Word Press Attempt#4” in my posts (and each of those attempts took about twenty minutes just to load).
There’s a time problem.
However, suggestions by many here that do this piecemeal, construct a cash bridge to the next Congress, and regroup, are not out of line. The problem is, when one side is gaming the crisis for its own purposes, fashioning a clean bipartisan package is not going to be easy or quick.
That’s the nasty reality we face. Of course here at the Bullshit Factory, some will chime in and say, walk away, let it all go to hell. That — almost entirely that — is what I rail against. That is just bone stupid. That is stupid at the Palin level.
If OTOH, Hank decides to support a leftier, “improved” version on the rescue plan come Thursday, all is forgiven and I’ll assume he was playing a part in the great kick the GOP while they’re down move that this will hopefully turn into.
Anytime. ;)
Short answers, yes and yes. The one thing I have barely seem mentioned is that I think with the war spending and now this, inflation is going to go right through the roof, so much so that the Ford/Carter period will seem like the good old days. If Obama happens to win he is going to have such a shit storm to deal with on this issue he really have to be the MUP to get past one term.
By the way, I think that when you see Greenspan mentioned as being the person most responsible for getting us into this mess I think it is basically because of this issue. In order to keep the bubble from deflating (first the dot.com, then housing) he continued to allow increasing liquidity into the system (I think it is the M3 measure of money), which you can essentially look at as printing money. If he held liquidity steady the fuel to start the housing bubble fire would not have been there. Instead Greenspan showed up at the fire with a truck full of rocket fuel.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Bankers, fund managers, “The Masters of the Universe,” who work in finance every day create a mess so big that they can’t solve it on their own. So for a solution they turn to Congress. You know; deficit spending, war in Iraq, Patriot Bill, FISA Bill, confirm Alberto Gonzales, Congress.
Well, I think it does matter. Their are some smart people who genuinely believe the current bill won’t get the job done. So I wonder how it is that we should pass any bill, NOW, only to have it fail to fix the problem. How many bites of the apple do we have to get it right? This is basically a wingnut bill, proposed by the same wingnuts who caused it all,
If the bad mortgages are the problem, do we just throw money at the financial institutions that mismanaged them in the first place and with a little oversight expect things to be done in a way that’s best for the country. How about taking that 700 bil and buying the suckers up at not firehouse prices but less than top dollar and roll them into HUD and let them use a sane income formula to reset payments where people can afford to stay in their homes and the government over time might get some money back. And the invest. banks will take a loss, but not big enough to put them under. This may be a crazy idea cause I don’t really know much about this subject.
You can draw a really straight line in political mindset from the secessionist Democrats of the 1800s to the modern GOP. The names of the parties flipped (probably around the time of the Southern Strategy) but the underlying nativism and authoritarianism are still there.
Wow. The AP just withdrew McCain’s schlong from its mouth.
The Jews got 40 years in the desert. Since the GOP are flirting with spending eternity in Hell (their concept, not mine, they just don’t realize their side is headed there) they should get at least twice that much.
More than one ellipsi.
ThymeZone wrote,
Oh, I see. In addition to being omniscient on matters financial, you’re omniscient on Congressional politics.
LOL!
ThymeZone wrote,
Who’s this imposter? I thought the sky is falling and the entire $700B plan had to be passed this minute, or else the planet is collapsing into a black hole.
Oh, I see. Having no actual argument to make or anything useful to say, your game now is to just keep pulling this lame canard out of your ass over and over again.
Well, you are in the right place for that kind of useless shit, lieberal.
O Rly?. John, pay the woman. She’z in ur blog, phicksin yo sheeot.
Please see my first assertion at post 152.
Thoughts?
Remember that the banking and credit systems function on a flow of cash the way the energy systems function on flows of oil and other materials. Take away the flow of cash and ….. thunk.
That pretty much is the entire point of the “crisis,” bailout and current legislative circus. Unless you are arguing that there is no real crisis, or more stupidly (and more in line with BJ “thinking”) that crisis can be ignored because SHUT UP THAT’S WHY and all rich people suck, then you have to deal with the time element.
Whatever you do, you have to do quickly enough to prevent a stoppage that kills the patient before you come up with that “new proposal” treament plan. Clock, ticking, etc.
TZ doesn’t think he’s omniscient at all. I, however, consider him to be a demigod. ;)
Oh, I get paid for the hosting. I am the owner of the company, after all. My per hour rate sucks even with the number of clients we have as I work far too many hours, but that’s life. What I am not and have no desire to be is a designer. Because people don’t always know what they want – they just know it isn’t what you’re showing them. A few rounds of that would seriously compromise my attempts to attain enlightenment with all things.
Test…apache restart after blocking yet another bot. Third one from Lockheed Martin. Looks like someone is about to get the ACL boot for an entire /20.
Oh really? Is THIS what was causing all the problems before? Hmmmm.
Maybe it’s time for you to take a breather.
Republicans are nothing if not reprehensible.
I saw a McCain ad earlier today calling Obama a hypocrite.
At 9:37AM John Cole writes “Heads I Win, Tails You Lose,” pointing out the McCain claim that he heroically led the troops to victory (oops!) while Obama sat on the sidelines.
Then, at 11 AM Cole offers “Country First, My Ass,” in which the Republican Party claims that the diabolical “Obama Plan” will cost the country “a trillion dollars more.”
So, which is it? Did Obama sit on the sidelines or has he been busy creating a disastrous plan that will help his Wall Street friends, while the Republican Party, champions of the average person, have been fighting the good fight?
Hmmm. Let me guess…none of the above.
And to think, millions of Americans will vote for that shit. And McCain calls Obama a hypocrite.
Depressing.
On that note let me interject that I cannot believe the right have gone crazy attacking ACORN across the intertubes while ignoring the Tina Fey smear of Palin by claiming she thought Bono was the King of Ireland.
I’m sorry, but the only stupid thinking I’m hearing are from those like you, who say ANY plan will do and because the end is near (which nobody knows) we should pass a fucked up bill, on the basis it’s the only one we have that wingnuts will swallow (which they didn’t) and better thus it’s better to go with a bill that will temporarily keep cash flowing (for a while) to companies that got us into this mess. Brilliant, just brilliant.
ThymeZone blithered,
Oh, I do have something useful to say, O Omniscient One.
I say: you’ve presented zero evidence for your insinuation that Congress must pass this crapola bill, because any alternative wherein the taxpayers don’t get screwed is unworkable politically.
Sadly, I am the only non-Republican in my family. My entire set of nuclear relatives are reprehensible, and if my parents were here to see this crap, I’m afraid they’d both let Rush talk them into believing all of the B.S. (they loved Rush).
I do not know if this bill will solve the current problem for the housing problem. Top experts say yes, many possible experts say no, and most people who might know aren’t talking. If you know this bushwhack plan will fail, explain in clear terms why. If you think there isn’t a problem, then why are so many main finance centers collapsing. If you are like me and just trusting a guy who sold a lot of fools on WMD’s and will never trust that ass licker again, that is fine but that doesn’t prove the dick sucker is lying now.
I do not believe Pelosi engineered the collapse of the vote to make dems look good – that was repubics and maybe she got lucky or at least had enough sense to keep it close so that if they bailed, the Dems didn’t hold the bag.
As for the bail out, it is true that much of the housing market is still solid and we could get well over half or even all the money back. So, this is a good gamble compared to the Iraq war. Is it what will solve all the problems – that question is easy- no. Will it help, again, yes. Will we get our money back? Most likely we will a majority but if it saves the market and prevents a lot of job lost (housing market, building, banks, realtors), I think it is a worthwhile gamble.
Balloon Juice “BAILOUT WITH OUR MONEY”…
Balloon Juice:
For days, it has been obvious what the GOP dream scenario was- have the bailout pass, but with predominantly Democratic support, dub it the the Bush/Pelosi/Reid/Obama bailout, and then run against it. This is the plan that Gingrich and …
Apologies if I missed it, but has anyone made comparisons yet between the Congressional GOPers + the RNC and the Japanese diplomats who were negotiating with us while Yamamoto’s strike force was already en-route to Pearl Harbor?
Cause I call 1st dibs if that hasn’t been pointed out yet.
dbrown wrote,
Absolutely not; it’s not what it’s designed for. It’s designed to keep the credit system from imploding by injecting capital into banks. (That’s not how people describe it; they say “taking toxic assets off the balance sheets.” But it’s effectively capital injection.)
The housing market is hosed and can’t be fixed. That’s because many, many homes were sold for way too much money. There’s simply no way that values can be reinflated; it would take trillions of dollars.
Main problem isn’t a general plan to fix the credit system. “Accept this bill, or you invite Armegeddon!” is a false dichotomy. The problem is that no convincing reason has been advanced why taxpayers shouldn’t be granted equity in exchange for the backdoor capital injection.
Krugman’s most recent post puts it this way:
Of course, if you listen to ThymeZone, you’d be nodding your head in agreement if someone said that in return for fixing the credit system, we should give $$ to Wall St with no strings attached, demand that all SC justices supporting Roe resign immediately, agree to an immediate attack on Iran, repeal the Bill of Rights, etc, etc, if the Republicans and the rest of the Right make it a condition for passing the bill.
Hmm…
(1) “Main problem isn’t a general plan to fix the credit system.” should be “Main objection isn’t to a general plan to fix the credit system.”
(2) Blockquote feature goofed up; Krugman has three ‘grafs, not one.
Evidence?
I love it when the plans of Boris and Natasha backfire. Lately the Rethugs seem to be imploding. Let’s hope the Karmic pay back trend keeps going.
From the people who brought us Richard Nixon, Dick Cheney and Shrub. The axis of evil.
… & doing something futile & stupid – with REAL money – will leave that much less to do ANYTHING with when it goes pear-shaped. Not a lot of that pie right now for the US to throw around, in case you didn’t notice.
What REALLY matters is what the global economy can sustain, now & in years to come. This bailout is being touted as “just the beginning” – & funnily enough, I don’t think that makes the global market very delighted. I doubt it can handle financing very many more instant no-strings trillion-dollar giveaways at this point. Feel free to differ.
The economy is many things, but it is not a living being. A torpid economy isn’t a dead one. Letting some of the worst of the bad paper go down the bog may be the best option of all, & it’s at least an improvement on pretending it has spurious worth, just to prop up a mega-bubble – & mostly on the dime of people who will never have enough spare capital to play the market, to boot … yeah, let’s reward Wall Street AGAIN for their latest neocon-assisted psychotic episode: that worked out so well the last 8 or 9 times – heck, just look at the paragons of reason & prudence they’ve been since the 1980s – what could possibly go wrong?
I’m sure they learned their lesson THIS time, right?
What better response to their idiocy than to handsomely reward it?
THAT sure will teach them a lesson, alright!
Sweden & Japan each went after just this kind of crisis, in very different ways.
Sweden was doing OK within 3 years or so.
Japan was still hurting badly after 11 years.
The US seems monomaniacally determined to use Japan as its model.
Now more than ever, its extremist ideology is about to hurt America, a lot, & for a long time.
Doing something smart is always preferable to doing something stupid, and in this case doing something is already demonstrably preferable to doing nothing. Should there have been the panic to get this done yesterday? No. This is time sensitive, the crunches are already happening, it isn’t make believe.
Now if the Republicans don’t want to play on THEIR ground the Democrats could write a Democratic Bill and ram it down McBush’s throat. The government could just take the companies, cut management off at the legs and tell shareholders we’ll pay you out of we realize minus a nice interest. Give bankruptsy judges the power to re-write mortgages, see if you can’t find some of the money that’s gone, hell – instead of playing at socializing it, just do it. The problem is the size of dealing with it. The other problem would come from trying to do this from ground zero in an actual timely manner. I reckon jiggered Paulson/Bush junk is the best we can do.
No, stuff hasn’t hit the fan yet, but if you wait for it to be real obvious you’ll be so far down the curve it won’t make enough difference to stop it.
[…] So, pour encourager les autres, here’s some nasty truth about the Republicans making political capital out of the bailout vote – and being caught redhanded in their […]
I’m probably attributing way too much political acumen to the dems than they deserve,
but is it possible that the dems intended to have enough of their own to vote against
the bill in order to:
* make McCain, the hero who suspended his own campaign to save the day, look bad
* prevent the repubs from doing what they intended to do, that is… criticize the
dems for working with Bush to toss taxpayer money at Wall Street corporate goons
I mean… McCain came out of the mess looking really, really bad. Could it be that he was played?
[…] This is what was called, in the Nixon White House, a ratfuck. […]
This is not the republican party your daddy and grandpappy voted
for. It is an extremist neo con bunch of cronies who have taken
over the party … Grover Norquist for one example. Americans have
woken up to this party. If republicans ever expect to win again
they had better take their party back from these radical
extremists. Like Bush, McCain will be nothing more than another
sock puppet for the neo cons. They have destroyed this country and
McCain does not deserve the opportunity to bury the US in the
subterrainian. All of them should be tried and convicted as
Traitors to the US. I’ve studied these clowns over 8 years and know
what I’m talking about.