A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics
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A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics | |
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September 29, 2008Bailout Bill Fails in House due to House GOP Opposition - NEW AND IMPROVED - UPDATED TWICEI turned on CSPAN at lunch, and watched in surprise as the current bailout bill took that moment to fail. I think I'm happy - I don't believe for a second the topic's dead, but I would like to see a better bill - though Barney Frank does deserve kudos for negotiating it into a much better bill than just trusting Paulson with most of a trillion. I'm dubious we'll see much market trouble as a result unless we see both new turbulence or major failures AND bailout progress is well and truly at a halt when that happens. UPDATE: Sad to be wrong there - the Dow's fallen 7%, and Asia's gotten it far, far worse still. It's too early to see what the effect on the credit markets will be like, which is the real key to this. I still think we're likely to see another bill do better - everything the gummint does takes time, of course, especially if it's done well. UPDATE 2: The Fed has announced it's pumping in $630B into its CDS loan swap window, That, I think, is a better way to spend the $$$. There's a LONG and interesting comment thread attached to a quick statement about the downturn. I'm definitely happy about the vote, and wish Congress had had this kind of courage on 9/12/01 to give Bush the kind of reception his long overreaches deserved. This was more of the same, and by publically saying to the public at large that we NEEDED a bailout, despite lacking authority to make it happen, he gave Wall Street good hopes of getting $$$, a hope which is now frustrated, IMHO causing today's trouble. Posted by Jon Kay at September 29, 2008 02:33 PMComments
HUZZAH!!!! What would have been a rehash of Hoover's failed Reconstruction Finance Corporation which in both cases was purposed to bail out large investors, foreign investors and of course who can forget those multimillion dollar parachutes and salaries of overpaid, underperforming CEO's. The bill was a lot of bait and switch. It's limit on CEO salaries was basically to reduce the level at which a corporation would be taxed.
What FDR did was freeze the whole system, reset people's mortgages to a 30 year low interest instrument. For allthe revisionist grief that FDR gets, the guywas right on all accounts concerning the banking systen. We are in the process of relearning a very old lesson, at a cost of over a trillion dollars. One wonders, when Bush just basically said no more rules back in Oct 2002, if they were they trying to pad a very anemic recovery to cover their asses regarding the wildly increasing deficit spending, and to goose the GDP. Posted by: Marcus at September 29, 2008 04:38 PMI think there needs to be a shenanigans call here. Fails due to GOP opposition?? I do think that a larger number of Democrats voted against it than Republicans. It was a failure of the whole House to vote for it, not just GOP opposition. I think it is a good thing. It was bad legislation with way too many loopholes. More time needs to be taken and another plan needs to be formulated that does not increase taxpayer debt. Not sure why you would want to try to cure a crack addict with more crack. Posted by: Jim M at September 29, 2008 10:45 PMOops a little late and tired from lack of sleep for reasons other than the market...More 113 GOP and 95 Dem voted against. Both sides more than the margin is my point. Posted by: Jim M at September 29, 2008 10:59 PMI'm going to note that the central banks are doing what they should be doing, pouring capital into the better performing banks. I'll note one other thiing. Despite all these foreclosures there are tens of millions of home owners paying their bills. Of the 86 million or so if we just say that 60 million are paying 2k a month that's 120 billion going to the banks each month. Then there's card payments, car payments, commercial loan payments that are probably in the 10's of billions, etc. That's a lot of liquidity, maybe not an optimal amount but I don't buy the doom and gloom we need to do something now narrative. Posted by: Marcus at September 30, 2008 02:17 AM |
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