Strange Bedfellows
Well, this whole bailout failure, and the resultant market collapse, has produced a number of strange bedfellows. Nancy Pelosi and George W. Bush. Dennis Kucinich and Newt Gingrich. John McCain and Barack Obama. Hard left progressives and hard right conservatives. Mike Castle and ….gasp…. me.
Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., broke ranks with the majority of House Republicans to vote for the measure, which was defeated 228-205.
“I just felt the economy needed a boost very badly, and I thought this was the best way to do it,” Castle said in a phone interview shortly after the vote.
I hated this bailout. The idea of giving money to those who created this mess disgusted me. It is the main reason people across this country are opposed to the bailout. No, not because they are opposed to governmental intervention, which is apparently the reason two thirds of Republicans voted against it, but because the public does not want their money propping up failed criminal enterprises that caused this mess.
I agree. But, if something is not done, god knows what happens. Today the market dropped 778 points. Soon, if it is happening already, credit will dry up. Payrolls will not be met. Jobs will be lost. There will be no money to spend, meaning sales of all types of goods will plummet, meaning more companies will fail, meaning more jobs will be lost, and the vicious cycle of Depression begins. The original and unacceptable Bush-Paulson bailout bill was improved by bipartisan congressional negotiations. The bill voted on today did include provisions for doling out the money in installments, limiting executive compensation at the firms participating in the rescue program, giving the taxpayers equity in the securities bought by the government so that there was a possibility that all the money used in the bailout would be recouped.
So, in the end, I was for it.
But that ship has sailed.
On Friday, I wondered aloud with some of the Delaware Liberal illuminati as we awaited the start of the Presidential debate if we could just fast forward five years and see the affects of doing nothing versus doing the bailout. I guess in a small way, we are going to be living through that fast forward experiment over the next few days or weeks. A part of me still says let all these banks and firms fail, and let’s start over. That will require a lot of suffering of the innocent though, which is what is making me support some kind of rescue plan. I guess we will just have to wait and see.
Progressive democrats were absolutely correct to Vote No Bail Out. This was all scare tactics to force the american people into thinking the sky was falling. The republicans against it were but very different reasons. They don’t want any regulations.
It was correct not to support this banker coup!
Now lets go back to the table with the entire house and senate represented, not just the “insider” leadership. One Congressman stated he had never been locked out of som many hearings in the entire 16 years of service.
This is the Bush/Cheney/Paulson bill! The grand bail out of the GOP and their cronies they have been supporting for 30 years. Let the bankers fail who cares. They brought it on themselves.
Lets have cooler minds prevail and take our time crafting a bill that holds citizens harmless.
DD-
From Wiki, a description of the 1987 Market Crash:
The crash on October 19, 1987, a date that is also known as Black Monday, was the climactic culmination of a market decline that had begun five days before on October 14th. The DJIA fell 3.81 percent on October 14, followed by another 4.60 percent drop on Friday October 16th. But this was nothing compared to what lay ahead when markets opened on the subsequent Monday. On Black Monday, the Dow Jones Industrials Average plummeted 508 points, losing 22.6% of its value in one day. The S&P 500 dropped 20.4%, falling from 282.7 to 225.06. The NASDAQ Composite lost only 11.3% not because of restraint on the part of sellers but because the NASDAQ market system failed.
Today was not close. And look what the market did after the crash in 1987… its not time to give away a trillion dollars to the shareholders of these firms simply because we are scared.
I doubt we will look back and think giving banks a trillon dollars would have helped – whatever the outcome.
“No, not because they are opposed to governmental intervention, which is apparently the reason two thirds of Republicans voted against it”
Did you stop being partisan for a second and consider that maybe the Republicans who voted against it did so because their constituents didn’t like the bill?
I surely hope so Mike W. Maybe both sides of the isle ought to start listening to their CONSTITUENTS or it might be GAME OVER for those who don’t put their EARS on ( CB radio slang)
I harbored no illusion that the bail out would have worked, Herbert Hoover signed a similar bailout bill in febuary 1932 and the great depression intensified. The amount allocated to what was called the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was 500 millon, a large amount in 1932 dollars. Over 2000 banks failed anyway.
Even though it was doomed in the long run I was hoping it would pass so as to buy a little time so people could prepare for the hard times to come.
It would serve as a patch in a dam that would allow more people to flee to higher ground before the dam breaks. With out the bail out the melt down of our economy is going to seem to happen overnight. Job losses will increase at an amazing rate. If you have a job hold on to it for dear life. Get your savings divided into gold and forign currency, save money were ever you can, and hang on , it`s going to be one hell of a bumpy ride for a long while.
This is all a giant GOP trick to make the Dems own the coming recession.