To save the US economy - Republicans turn to a tribunus plebis??!

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Well, from what I heard a quite large majority of the American population was against the bail out and had excerted quite some pressure on their representatives.

Anyhoo, I can't help but to feel a bit of glee here when the financial markets are burning. We have a saying here in Sweden that doesn't translate well but I will try: "The only real happiness is glee". On an intellectual level I can understand that we are screwed if the financial sector caves but my small evil little heart is screaming in glee when greed for once is paid back with something other than profit.

 

I think it's much more basic than that. The House of Representatives runs for re-election every two years, so all 435 of them are up for re-election five weeks from now. If you vote through this bill which does nothing for individual homeowners with mortgage trouble, and it doesn't bring results quickly (and quick results are almost impossible) your re-election bid may be in trouble.

Look, the people with mortgage problems are not going to like that the bill doesn't have anything in it for them. If a decent percentage of your constituency falls into that category, by passing that bill you lose their vote. If the stock market doesn't improve in the next five weeks, then most of your constituency is going to feel like you wasted $700 billion and got nothing out of it.

I am surprised that it failed only to the extent that Congress usually feels inaction is the worst thing it could do - this gives the impression that they didn't even try to fix the economy.

 

The problem for most people is that most of their life savings are in their 401ks, or other financial accounts they have that are tied to the health of the stock market. There are a lot of retired people who are living off of their funds. So, for them it will mean less money to live on. For many of us, who are still a long way from retiring, it's largely a paper loss at the moment. But it puts all of us behind in our financial planning for the long term.

 

So the bailout bill dies on the floor today, resulting in a 9% dunk on all 3 major stock indexes, the greatest single-day market crash in history. Awesome.

Democrats voted 3/2 in favor, Republicans voted nearly 3/1 against it...but according to McCain and minority leader Boehner, it's Obama's fault, because Nanci Pelosi gave a speech that was somehow* so offensive to the house Republicans that some of them bailed at the last minute. Those poor, delicate flowers in the house minority. And it's supposedly the Dems who are injecting partisan politics into this crisis.

We're screwed for now, but I had some serious misgivings about the bill in it's current form. I'm both glad it died and very worried at the same time, because flawed as it was it was better than doing nothing, and the longer this drags out the more of the financial sector is going to have to be nationalized. We'll have to see what they can hammer out in the next few days, but I think it's clear at this point that McCain's little gamble has been counter-productive to say the least and has thusfar been very expensive for our country.

*I don't know what speech they listened to, but they're clearly just using this as an excuse to avoid supporting the bill not done "their way." Pelosi's speech was pretty lame (like all of her speeches) and nothing to get worked up about. I'm glad these tools are taking this so seriously.

 

I have to say i agree with chandos on this.(looks up & waits for the lightning to strike)

 

I think that what really needs to be examined is the salaries and bonuses that the guys running the banks are getting. I heard there were some guys that took home 8 digit bonuses. What's wrong with this picture?

 

I can understand why many Republicans voted no, because for many of them, it was a matter of deeply held princples, that it's not the government who should be "fixing" market issues. For those who voted no, there is a real feeling that the free market should run its course, for better or worse.

The real big loser of the day was John "Campaign" McCain who blamed, of all people, Obama, for the chaos of today's unfolding events. At this point, I'm seriously concerned with the guy's mental state. Could he be cracking under the pressure of this camaign? I mean really, he was standing there saying that Obama and the Democrats were "partisan," while obviously not listening to himself, as he was being astoundingly bitter and partisan in his own comments. Could he be losing his grip?

I've heard rumors that there is a movement by Republicans to have Sara Palin, after her god awful interviews of the last few weeks, removed from the ticket before Mac's campaign slides any further into oblivion. I'm not sure what's going on with him, but I've never seen the guy, who is normally fairly cool under pressure, give the appearance of someone who was on the edge of a meltdown (no pun intended).

But he's not alone: Barny Frank came out after the vote on the doomed bailout, and looked not only like he was on drugs, (or in desperate need of them) and could barely put a complete sentence together. I hope our political leadership is not meltingdown, along with the markets. This is getting really scary....

 

Chandos(shakes head) nothing mccain said was any worse than what obama said. Why do dems always try to insist mccains one breath away from keeling over or going crazy? Thats the lowest crap you can pull. That would be the equivalent of me saying "because obama kept trying to interrupt at the debate he looked like he was cracking up because people weren't believing his version of the truth" Neither has a place in this discussion.

The big loser today was the american people. the markets lost well over $700 billion today & we got nothing for it. It was a failure by BOTH parties to get over their deep seated lack of bi-partisonship.
Yet another reason we need 2 term limits on all elected government officials.

 

Martaug, what Chandos said was biased, but it was hardly a low blow. John McCain, in trying to heap the blame for the failed bill on Barack Obama, is either ridiculously out of touch or - reality be damned - trying to grab whatever political advantage he can with no regard to the fact that he was talking out his ass or that his motives in trying to blame Obama are more transparent than my living room window. More democrats than not supported the initial bill, and more republicans than not opposed it. Obama, himself, supported it, but the setback was somehow his fault? Please.

Of course. Setting term limits will magically make both parties work together in a bi-partisan fashion.

 

Drew, the point is that both candidates are blaiming the other for the whole shebang. Sure, the Republicans blocked the bill, but blaiming that on McCain is like blaiming you for Martaug's post (you were there, but that's about it). Remember, McCain was actually supporting the bill.

Looking at the actual economy, I'm starting to wonder how bad this really is. It's been over a week now and I haven't noticed any changes, nor have any of my co-workers who are a little more involved in the stock market. I'm more inclined now than I ever was to say let it all burn (i.e. that the House Republicans did the right thing).

 

NOG, there's been plenty of finger pointing in McCain's general direction, sure, but I have yet to see Obama do it. Obama did, however, come out and state that he was confident that a bi-partisan deal would be passed shortly and expressed concerns about getting too involved in the process, stating that presidential politics could end up making things harder rather than easier. That's a far cry from saying that McCain caused the deal to fall apart on Friday. McCain, on the other hand, had no problem saying exactly that about Barack Obama. The bailout deal, by the way, was finally hammered out late Saturday night, so we should probably stop talking as if a solution hasn't already been reached.

 

The point in blaming McCain though is that, by all accounts, we were close to a resolution the day he decided to parachute in where he wasn't needed (he'd had no role or interest in the process up to that point, and he isn't even on the finance committee) and wasn't wanted (both Democrats and Republicans were asking both candidates to keep the Presidential race out of the negotiations) and the process was derailed as a result of the circus. You can't blame the entire failure on McCain, and I don't. But it's obvious to me that his little stunt was a major hindrance, especially since once he was there he didn't contribute much at all and then tried to take credit for "bringing everyone together," which also didn't happen. McCain has done this before.

 

Either you live in a barrel with an imaginary stock market or you don't follow the markets much and your friends do not follow it much more. Letting banks burn equals to that of letting all of the financial sector burn.

While I can see why it seems so disgusting to use public money to those who are the cause of this all and to save their butts it's and absolute necessity. The credit markets are based on trust like I've said many times before. When banks go down the trust on the markets and the ability of banks to keep up to their committments disappears. The supply of money diminishes which efficently drives up the interest rates. Skyhigh interest rates will result in corporations freezing their expansion (since all expansion is basically done through credit, it's very inefficent for big companies to keep any big individual reserves of cash), forcing them to cut production (increasing unemployment) and even causing bankrupcies in companies that are indebted, the same of course applies for individuals with mortgages. I would not know what kind of mortgages people have but I assume that a doubling of their interest rates would severly destabilize their economy. The result of course would be an increase in unemployment and a decrease in production. Another thing worth remembering that banks normally loan quite a lot of money to each other meaning that when one bank goes down its losses will be shared with quite a lot of other banks possibly causing them to go down as well causing a chain reaction of failed banks.

This is what WILL happen if many banks are allowed to fall. As long as the Government is there offering even some sort of guarantees that the markets will be guarded the risk of skyhigh interestrates is reduced and some trust held in the markets. These bailouts are an absolute necessity to avoid an economic meltdown. The Government guarantees and bailouts are the reason why the markets are still holding together, and that's why it probably has not affected neither you nor your friends that seriously.

 

I suppose many of them think the reason for the problems are other people's congressman, not MY congressman, so they see no reason to not reelect their guy because it's someone else's fault. Dems blame the Repubs for every problem and vice versa (though, given whose been the majority for most of the last decade and what happened yesterday, the Dems have much more credibility in making that claim).

 

That is a good article, BTA. But most people don't even know who their Congressman is. And some voters, just press the "D" or the "R" button, without knowing anything about the person they are electing. But it's nothing new. I like this quote by John Adams:

"I have come to the conclusion, that one useless man is a Disgrace, two are a law firm and three or more are called a Congress."-- John Adams.

Some things never change.

 

What a mess. I wonder how this will all play out.

 

Here's an interesting quote:

This was from a Sept. 25 interview on ABC's "Good Morning America." Also in the interview was:

The person interviewed was President Clinton.