In a moment of historic import in the Capitol and on Wall Street, the House of Representatives voted on Monday to reject a $700 billion rescue of the financial industry. The vote came in stunning defiance of President Bush and Congressional leaders of both parties, who said the bailout was needed to prevent a widespread financial collapse.
Stock markets plunged as it appeared that the measure would go down to defeat, and kept slumping into the afternoon when that appearance became a reality. By late afternoon the Dow industrials had fallen more than 5 percent, and other indexes even more sharply. Oil prices fell steeply on fears of a global recession; investors bid up prices of Treasury securities and gold in a flight to safety.
The New York Times paints the bills’ defeat as a crushing blow to the prestige of President Bush, a man whom the paper and his Democratic foes have relentlessly attempted to demonize, pillory and marginalize since Florida in 2000, eventually riding their whatever-will-stick tactics to Congressional victories in 2006.
Mission accomplished!
And for true portraits in leadership, you will look through the record in vain for an example so singular as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a politician who really knows how to reach across the aisle when a crisis rears its head:
Speaker Pelosi’s speech before the House today was remarkable, but not in a good way. She was trying to round up votes for a bailout package that shes claims to believe is essential for the stability of the American economy. She can’t, and doesn’t want to, pass the bill without a substantial number of Republican votes. So what does she do? You would think she would say, “let’s pass this emergency measure now, in the best interests of the country, and talk about who is to blame later.” Instead, Pelosi began her speech with a highly partisan tirade against “Bush” and “Republican” economic policies, which were allegedly to blame for this situation. She focused on an attack on the growth of federal deficits, which clearly are at best tangential to the current crisis.
Way to stiffen their spines, Nance!
The markets are reporting out their own vote of no-confidence:
Stocks fell by nearly 9 percent on Monday — the worst single-day drop in two decades — after the government’s bailout plan, touted by its supporters as a balm for the current market stress, failed to pass the House of Representatives, setting off a fresh wave of anxious selling.
In yet another day that has shaken the embattled canyons of Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrials fell 777.68 points after it became clear that the legislation could not muster the support it needed to pass the House.
I’m sensing a prolonged buying opportunity for anyone who still has two dimes to rub together.
You know, in some respects I’m grimly relieved: It’s come to this, that any plan pushed so hard, so quickly, by so many people who were so self-evidently asleep at the switch for so many years was almost bound to have built in a cornucopia of unintended consequences. The cure might well have been as bad as the disease.
In Nero’s time, Rome had to settle for a soloist: In these more modern times, we have assembled 535 fiddlers as the capital burns.
We let them play these little games for too long. Rewarded the better players with partisan loyalty, chairmanships and presitige! Made them vie and grapple amongst themselves for pork barrell primacy, always looking for the next personal hand out, never demanding any kind of stewardship.
What’s coming? We deserve it.
Here in another month or so we have a chance to come up with some real change: if you were planning on voting for an incumbent for the House or Senate, vote for the other guy…
Bullnav is right, clean house… literally. Run the bums out on a rail.
I am all for a hands-off approach to the markets. Let them fail when needs be. Times might well be hard, but we have, as a nation, seen much worse.
Better to suffer now than to enslave our children with an onerous debt and a socialist economy that will slowly wear down and out under the alleged leadership of elected (and appointed) officials.
I would rather live in a tent with my daughter, eating what we could grow, knowing that we owned all we had, than to live under the type of government that the Dems and the Light Worker have in mind for us.
Live Free or Die.
But here in Old Kentucky the bum running is as bad or worse than the bum currently in office. Kind of between the rock and a hard place.
Ugh. I was looking at what it would take to set out on my own again now that my finances have stabilized.
Not looking so good now…
Working for a charity as I do, I’m starting to wonder how long I’ll have a job…
More here:
The idea of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd presiding over the solution to the problem they were the proximate cause of, is noxious.
The whole thing irritates me to no end. My husband came home from work, with my cooking dinner, and I went off on a rant, calling the whole lot of them, from WallStreet, to greedy CEOs, to the folks who should have been monitoring, every name in the book, and wishing they will all rot in hell.
Irritated is not a strong enough word. A pox on the whole lot of ‘em. May they rot.
I am all for a hands-off approach to the markets. Let them fail when needs be. Times might well be hard, but we have, as a nation, seen much worse.
Better to suffer now than to enslave our children with an onerous debt and a socialist economy that will slowly wear down and out under the alleged leadership of elected (and appointed) officials.
I would rather live in a tent with my daughter, eating what we could grow, knowing that we owned all we had, than to live under the type of government that the Dems and the Light Worker have in mind for us.
Live Free or Die.”
Damn skippy.
This is going to take a real expert to figure out. Have they called in Jamie Gorelick yet to chair the Blue Ribbon Commission to figure out that this was all Bush’s fault?
Lex,
What do you mean by “we,” Kemo Sabe?”
Hey, Pelosi got a twofer! She knew she didn’t have the votes, so set about covering her “aspidistra” by bad-mouthing the Republicans before the vote even. “It’s all their fault! It’s always their fault”. Hey, it works! Or, has so far. I’m coming around to thinking that Nick “The Greek” was right.
This too shall pass for better or for worse. Worse if “The One” gets in, not so worse in all other cases. Dig around for a couple of nickels and think about buying a little here and a little there. WTF? My bet is on “financials”. The big ones still standing.
Question. If the congress wrote the rules and the banks and Wall Street played by those rules, why is everybody pissed at banks and Wall Street? I’d think the focus should be on congress. (I’m thinking of about a dozen of the rotten ba—-ds). Try this on for size:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs&eurl=http://mkfreeberg.webloggin.com/
Good luck to us all.
Oh, a late starter from AmericanDigest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hSnEMV58F8&eurl=http://americandigest.org/
In case any of you need a laugh.
Hey, trying to help here…..
It was always reassuring in my 24 yr. career that in times of crisis Navy leadership stood up, took charge, and usually did the right thing. Didn’t matter if it was the seaman’s mess, goat locker or wardroom. It gave me a sense of hope and when it was my turn, strengthened my confidence. This current debacle has left me with a sense of dread as far as the ability of these clowns to lead themselves out of a wet paper bag. Let alone this financial clusterf**k.
Where have all the cowboys gone?
What’s coming? New records in unemployment exacerbated by double of the number of banks reporting tighter credit than during the S&L crisis and dot com blowup. And this time China holds the purse strings. Black swan indeed.
[...] Way We were Posted on September 30, 2008 by grouchy Lex sums it up quite nicely…… “In Nero’s time, Rome had to settle for a soloist: In [...]
There is a fascinating network analysis of the links between all of the players in this mess. Will probably confirm your worst fears, and shed some new light.
Such as this:
You nailed it, Lex
When they stole all our votes in 2000–a conspiracy between the Supreme Court, Administration (to-be), The Congress and the Oil-money vipers–it was like taking candy from a baby.
We didn’t stop them. We wined a little; but they like that. They like to see us squirm.
They can’t be blamed for their ‘unconscionable greed’. That’s their natural instinct. It is ‘US’ that are to blame, for encouraging ‘them’. We gave them the ‘thumbs up’ 2004. Like, “Good job. Keep sucking.” True, some incumbents were rolled from their seats in ’04; but even that was kinda’ feeble. We left the kingpins standing. Something more comprehensive might be in order now.
This ‘Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac…”take the money and run”…down Wall street’ crap; and the so called “bail-out” conspiracy that our government has fast-tracked together–acting, all the while, as if they were saving the world from complete catastrophe–is just the latest chapter in their eight-year plunder…kind of the final slap in the face [unless they have something more up their sleeves].
Beyond perversion, it would be good grounds for full-blown Revolution, in any other country.
What American would argue:
“…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive…it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,…”
Problem is: there no one ‘here’ to revolt…’cept us chickens. It seems that the old revolutionary spirit died out back in the 1780s..
Too bad, because the beauty of this country is that the ‘Right to Revolt’ is built-in to it’.
“A republic, if you can keep it.”
The Founders knew what they were doing.
Of course, that’s not saying we should take up arms and storm the Capitol. That’s illegal, apparently.
But there happens to be ‘one day’, in every four years, or so, that the government actually invites us to Revolt. (Except for in 2000, when that invitation was retracted.)
Have you noticed that these Congress people have been patting each other on the ass right through this Fanny-Mac plunder. With elections coming up, they’ve about worked themselves up in a sweaty orgy of BFing each other blue…right on C-SPAN, in front of god and everybody. It’s embarrassing to watch. But, no doubt, it’s fun for them. Most likely, a good share of them are guzzling Champaign and picking at the caviar on some oil-viper’s yacht right now.
There is no real “hope” for America; regardless of what you might hear from any politicians running for office these days. If there was, we would vote every, single one of those cockroach-suckers out of office–good and bad ones alike…no exceptions…just to send a little message to the government :
“Hi…. It’s us.”
…and keep doing it, every election, until they get the message.
The Revolution is on Tuesday, November 4th. Fight or die.
Paul