This is really a remarkable moment. There are congressmen openly saying on the floor of the house that they have no idea if the bill will work or not, but they encourage its passage anyway because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate. Unsaid, there is not time to think this over, because everything was just fine until a week ago when this disaster struck unannounced.
The average American really has no interest in politics at all. But given a few days to look it over the average farmer, independent contractor or shop owner is far, far more literate in finance than Congress.
This will not end well for them.
when this disaster struck unannounced.
But politicians are good at reading opinion polls and the results are not pretty. Congressional leaders are reputedly scouring the corridors for congressmen who are retiring or who are in "safe" constituencies.
This is one of those situations where everybody wants everybody else to do the leading. Obama and McCain barely debated it. This is a Bush Plan and his brand is toxic.
The very people who proclaimed small government and the magic of the markets are now looking for state intervention. No wonder the US electorate are confused. Vote McCain for war without gain
No, the emails aren't pretty. At a minimum, one hundred to one against.
Precisely so. One of the Republicans just said "I don't want to vote for this bill. I want you to."
These assholes will at most have to adjust the cleaning schedule for their private pools, for some reason Kissinger is back in the news, and my kid is going to jail for pot possession.
Krugman has said today that the Dem's problem is that they cannot be seen to own the bailout, which is why presumably they chose to reform the Paulson one instead of proposing an entirely new approach. If that had, the Republicans would simply have opposed it and it would have become the Dem's bailout. As it is, it's still Paulson's bailout. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
And every House member is up for re-election.
Where is their sacrifice, their solidarity, their partriotism?
Their bloody ordinary common sense?! Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
The real culprits are sitting pretty on their Billions whilst the politicians are supposed to clean up their mess for them. No wonder they're not going about that task with a lot of enthusiasm - why take the consequences for other people's crass greed?
I suspect that Plan B was intended as the last installment of classic shock capitalism, except that it failed. Goldman has been a beneficiary so far. If the speculation about the need to recapitalize the Fed is correct perhaps doing that is seen as covering the tracks for what has been done to date. Then Paulson can exit and the problem falls to the next administration.
The dissident Republicans are complaining that this was just a gift to those who brought us the calamity. It is that and it could also be the get away vehicle for the actual heist, which consisted of giving most of the Feds assets to AIG to protect Goldman, keeping bad assets from Merril to protect B of A etc. etc. to keep collapse at bay till after the election.
It is unclear how the FDIC has managed to dispose of the toxic waste from its most recent aquisitions without using up its ~$70 billion reserve. Perhaps it can't manage and it needs to be re-capitalized also. In other words, the Fed and FDIC may be out of bullets leading up to the election.
By solving the problems of credit availability by creating new institutions that could supply necessary credit, the existing system could be allowed to unwind itself while what is left of the real economy continues to function. This would be opposed. It would be like a hostage taker releasing all his hostages. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.
Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
- Edmund Burke, philosophical founder of Anglo-American conservatism. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Sorry to hear that melvin.
