Congress makes financial markets sweat

After months of working almost around the clock, and pressed by my bosses to take a day off for goodness sake, I took a day off. And look what happened! Not having ridden Hawaii Superferry before, I decided to take a trip to Maui on the big catamaran and experience it for myself. More on that in another post. But because of the trip, I took Monday off and got home around 3:30 p.m. Monday to discover that Wall Street had developed a case of the vapors after the surprise rejection of the revised Wall Street bailout package. Rebel Republicans in the House killed the first version of the deal, insisting that some way be found to make Wall Street financial firms pay, even if only eventually, the cost of the rescue. A mechanism for that was devised and the Monday vote was supposed to close the deal. Instead, the House rejected it. There was some entertaining posturing over whose fault it was. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave a speech blaming the crisis on lax regulatory oversight by the Bush administration. Not altogether accurate -- it was caused by lax regulatory oversight by the last four or five administrations, Republican and Democrat. But that's what she said, and afterwards the Republican leadership in the House said it lost about a dozen votes on her partisan remarks. To which House Banking Chairman Barney Frank, a Democrat who sounds like Elmer Fudd, replied that anyone who would vote against the national interest because his feelings were hurt should get out of Congress because he isn't tough enough. Sideshow aside, Wall Street lost roughly 7% of its entire value in one day because of the failure of the bailout to pass. Airline and oil stocks fell that much or more. Hotel stocks fell almost that much. Other Hawaii stocks did a little better. The really funny thing about the sideshow is that both Democrats and Republicans seem to think Republicans killed the bailout, but Hawaii's two members of the House, Neil Abercrombie and Mazie Hirono, both Democrats, also voted against it. The fact is that congressmen who are up for re-election are getting a lot of mail from people who want Wall Street to pay and don't realize that a series of additional Wall Street failures will probably result in a deeper global economic slowdown and the loss of hundreds of thousands of American jobs. If you want someone to pay, dig this: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives have been served with grand jury subpeonas. I think the Bush administration could redeem itself very nicely if it put a few of these boys in jail for misrepresenting the risk of the investments they sold until investors tumbled to the truth, stopped buying them, and precipitated the credit crisis.

Comments

[Dave]

I agree... Locking up a few hundred people would be a good start.

However... You have to admit... It's a bit of a hard sell.

In my opinion... You are part of the problem.

You, the rest of the media and politicians aren't doing much to simplify things.

People on the news (like you) seem to use the word "Toxic" quite a bit when describing the stuff the super-wealthy want to sell us ordinary taxpayers.

The only thing most people DO seem understand about the Bailout, is that super-wealthy people are trying to scare us ordinary taxpayers into buying a bunch of Toxic Waste that EVERYONE seems to agree is totally worthless at the moment.

It's so simple when you look at it like that. The obvious answer is "Heck No!"

(You wanted it, You bought it, now you can keep it)

Also... Bush has "Cried Wolf" before with Weapons of mass destruction, etc... So... The scare tactics don't seem to be working this time.

I guess what I'm trying to say is the arguments to NOT go with the bailout are super simple to understand. The arguments FOR the bailout don't make any sense at all.

The only simple argument they have revolves around "Scare Tactics" and people seem to be somewhat desensatised to them.

They need to come up with a different, simple argument for why we should support this or everyone who votes for it will be voted right out of office.

If it's the "Right thing to do" for the good of the country, the politicians should be brave, put their country first and vote for it even if it ruins any chance they might have had for reelection.