The bill passed, Hank Paulson (brilliant liberal democrat) has FDR-like power over the American economy and everything will be fine now.  Right?  Sure, except that in American government today, there are no truth-tellers.  Why did our democrat Congress (with many republican ayes) vote to authorize the immediate spending of $350 billion to bail out the banking industry?  Mostly because we allowed our government to run a sector of that industry (Fannie and Freddie) with characteristically brilliant, ethical and efficient management.  Keeping your dollars safely spent.

Any heads roll?  Anyone to blame?  Do you know why this happened so that it won't happen again?  No, you don't.  Our (soon-to-be-more) democrat-controlled Congress promises hearings.  Next year.  Nothing now, just throw the money out in the street and let Hank handle it.  There's lots of it to do good, what good will be done?  I don't know either.  Is there any Congressional oversight over your money?  No.  There isn't.  Don't hold your breath for a list of government executives who are being indicted. 

This is a country dominated by professional liberal politicians, without a dissenting party and completely devoid of any skeptical oversight by the press.  And wait until you get a face full of President Obama.  Won't it get better then?  He'll cut the spending.  Right? And, good luck getting a doctor's appointment. 

Maybe he'll appoint Jamie Gorelick to head the health care bureaucracy.  After serving in the late 1990's under Janet Reno and writing the law that essentially put a wall between the CIA and the FBI, she trotted over to FNMA and, well you now know how that worked out.  Sure, she's perfectly seasoned for another "promotion" on your tax dollars.  Don't worry about a thing, your government has everything well in hand.  This is a five for its importance to every single American, taxpayer or not.  Not to mention our continued evolution into a pseudo-socialist/fascist state.  Tough, tough ten years coming up.  Where did that constitution go, anyway?

The House just approved the government's $700 billion financial rescue plan, stocks tumble in response...Nice!

  Let the rich bail out the rich.

The attempt to force workers to pay for the stupidity of speculators should have failed.

WaMu didn't go out of business, it was swallowed up by a bigger baracuda.

***

  Thanks for opening your fat, ugly, hate filled mouth again Nancy Pelosi.  You couldnt at least wait till AFTER the bill was signed lol. 

Both parties need to quit acting like a bunch of 3rd graders,  and COME TOGETHER. Doing nothing is only going to make it worse (banks going under, people losing houses, stocks tummbling ect).  Listen to Bernacke,  it MUST be done!  It will not fix itself.

Most people who are against this bill dont understand the problem or the implications of the law not passing.  The problem is the credit markets.  If banks are unwilling to lend to eachother and everyones money is tied up in tbills then the  train that is the american economy will grind to a halt.  I understand the free market economist because 99.9% of the time I am him.  But legislation mixed with wall street greed and financial engineering has lead us to a point of no return. we have no choice to reinvest in america.  my tax dollars (24K to the fed last year alone) are going to have to be used to buy these troubled assets. yes im pissed that i have to fork over more money to the damn government, yes im pissed at lenders who gave loans to people who they knew couldnt afford them - why wouldnt they, all they were going to do was bundle them and package them right off to freddie and fannie, the sluts of the whole economic system. i blame the people who took out loans they didnt understand or didnt bother to read for houses they couldnt afford. all that dosent matter now. what matters is the liquidity of MBS, the return of the credit markets and the ability for banks to mark up all these loans that they have written down. we are talking only 6% of all home mortgages that are ruining are economy. we all messed up and now its up to all of us federal taxpayers (53% of population) to make up for it. i hate the fact that we have to do it but i love the bill. i love the idea and i love hank paulson. how many more washington mutals and indymacs need to go under before you all understand what is going on here? please people just inform yourself a little more of whats going on, dont settle for the 5 min brian williams gives you on the nightly news, its just not the whole story. this is not a bailout of fat cats on wall street. this is a bailout of our financial system and credit markets which will keep our economy from imploding. please support this bill. i beg you please.

The bailout bill today was rejected in Congress by a 228-205 vote. Generally speaking, the eastern establishment wings of both parties, along with the House leadership was in solid support of the bill.

This was a bad bill, which I have pointed out various times on this site in the past few days, would create bigger problems for the economy in the long haul. The idea that those bad assets which the government will be buying out will regain in value quickly is fools gold! By keeping prices artificially inflated, they're only distorting the market, keeping us in a general downward trajectory. There were also concerns that many of these assets werent truly marked to market; in other words, we really dont know the true value of the bad assets that are going to be bought up under the bill. The government should act, but the bailout isn't the answer. One move that can go a long way in softening the blow from this crisis would be changing the accounting rules that banks use to report devalued assets. Another solution, which is far from ideal, but at least would help in stabilizing the banks, would be to inject $200-$300 billion in capital to large, troubled banks. The problem is no longer one of liquidity, but rather capital. That is one thing that this bill simply does not address. Providing an injection of capital will help banks offset some of their losses which will lead to more lending, which IS the problem right now. Why isn't anyone in Congress pushing this and some other simpler but just as effective moves to shore up the system?

This defeat is not huge in the broader scheme of things; most likely they will come back with an alternate proposal in the next few days. Politically, Bush made two big mistakes here: 1. he tried to push the bill through in an atmosphere of paranoia, almost like a used car salesman. "You must act now or financial doom is around the corner!" He never gave an overarching cause to support the bill. Bush simply doesn't have the political capital (or credibility) to push such a big bill through Congress. 2. He politicized it by bringing Obama and McCain into the negotiations. Obama and the Democrats didn't trust McCain's intentions, and vice versa. But most importantly, the bill was patently bad, not connected to economic or political realities.

Even bigger news today was the 778 point drop in the Dow; that represents a 6.5 percent drop in the market today. Domestic and international markets are losing confidence in not only our economic institutions, but our political ones as well. To top it off, tommorrow is the end of the quarter, which means that the 3rd quarter numbers will be coming out tomorrow. It looks like its going to be very volatile going into the next few days. People are concerned about money market accounts and equity funds, lots of cash is going to be moving through the system.

Buckle your seatbelts...

It's a big story now but will fade fast into 2008 for two reasons- (1) the election and (2) the next package/idea since far too many people on both sides of the aisle didn't like this one.  Second the clever reviewer who mentioned the strong idea of the dems sending their own idea to dubya and daring him to veto it. . .this story is a black eye to the president, but the real story remains to be seen.  Hang on tight and remember- low stock prices do make for good deals.

My financial advice remains the same: invest in canned food and shotguns.

The only thing that is clear right now is that nobody really knows what to do.  Any good capitalist will tell you that if poorly run companies are not allowed to fail, soon they won't be allowed to succeed either.  However, the argument goes, some firms are so big, and so structural to our economy, that allowing them to fail could lead to "contagion" that brings down all sorts of related businesses.

The House's blocking of the bail out package is fascinating in its bi-partisanship.  The Dems came in 60-40 in favor, and the Republicans came in 67-33 against.  While there is a clear political line, it's closer than you might think - especially when you consider that a GOP president was on his knees begging for this bill's passage.

My own gut feel on this is a "no" is not the worst thing in the world.  But then again there are some awfully smart, capitalist folks that are in favor of the package - Warren Buffet and The Economist to name two.

No doubt the dems will come back tomorrow with their own plan and will dare GWB to veto it.