Tuesday editorial: Here there be monsters
Either the credit markets will seize up in the next few days, or they won’t.
Businesses either will get the short-term operating loans they need in the commercial paper market, or they won’t. Either they’ll get the money somewhere else (old-fashioned banks are back in style), or they won’t make payroll and will have to start laying off people.
Either the U.S. financial markets are on the brink of catastrophe . . . or maybe the markets will adjust to a new normal, one in which there are a few casualties on the way, but one in which the market works and taxpayers don’t get stuck with the tab.
Either the car down the highway that’s headed towards us at 90 miles an hour will swerve at the last minute . . . or it won’t.
If you’re going to play chicken, you have to be prepared to pay the consequences.
Anyone who says he can predict what the financial markets will do in the wake of Monday’s bet-the-farm rejection of the Bush administration’s $700 billion financial rescue plan by the U.S. House of Representatives is talking through his hat.
Predictions range from “meltdown” to “blip.” Initial responses edged toward the meltdown end of the scale. Stocks dropped 9 percent on the day, the biggest one-day drop in more than two decades. The Dow Jones industrial average was off nearly 7 percent; the Dow closed down 778 points, its biggest one-day point drop ever.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 stocks — the ones more likely to be included in mutual funds held by people on the now-iconic “Main Street” — were off 8.8 percent; the technology-heavy NASDAQ index lost 9 percent.
Worse could be in store. Or maybe not. The financial markets are in uncharted waters, off the edge of the map where it reads, “Here there be monsters.”
Two hundred and twenty-eight members of the House — 133 Republicans and 95 Democrats — rolled the dice and voted “no” on H.R. 3997. And what an odd coalition it was; local “no” voters included the hyper-conservative Republican Todd Akin of Town and County and the hyper-liberal Democrat William Lacy Clay Jr. of St. Louis. They included Collinsville Republican John Shimkus and Belleville Democrat Jerry F. Costello.
Rep. Kenny Hulshof of Columbia, the Republican nominee for Missouri governor, flew to Washington to vote “no,” ensuring that the bail-out vote will become an issue in the governor’s race.
The 133 no-voting Republicans thumbed their noses at President George W. Bush, whose Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, developed the bailout plan. The 95 Democrats thumbed their noses at their leadership, including Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who led the effort to refine Mr. Paulson’s bill.
“I would like nothing better than to be proven wrong,” Mr. Frank said after the vote, saying he feared the crisis would lead to a shutdown of America’s credit system. “A large number of members of the House don’t believe it; if that turns out to be the case, I would very cheerfully admit error and take the rest of the year off.”
Clearly, politics were at work. Mr. Bush is a lame duck who can’t do much for Republican members. Democrats, particularly urban Democrats and those facing tough election challenges, didn’t want to be seen as bailing out Wall Street fat cats while their constituents are suffering.
They are missing the point: Money may not trickle down, but pain cascades down.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., made an intemperate speech to start the debate, lambasting Mr. Bush’s economic policies, which did nothing to promote a bipartisan atmosphere.
Sooner or later — much sooner if the markets start to grind to a halt and pain starts to spread— a bailout bill will be back before the House. It is a time for genuine leadership — from the president, from those who would be president and from those elected to represent the best interests of their constituents.
There is a crisis. Responding to it calls for statesmanship, not gamesmanship.
Pelosi is being called “the Democratic Tom DeLay” by liberal blogs this morning. She put partisanship ahead of Country. He job was to get something done, not promote her party. Can you imagine Tip O’Neal or Sam Rayburn making a speech like that right before a tight vote? They may have thought it, they may had said it privately, but they would have never spit in the opposition’s faces. She needs to step aside in favor of someone who understands the role of the Speaker.
Apparently there is a lock on using the word “Obama” at the EP. ARe you aware that Sen. Obama attended the Black Caucas gala Sat night and it was mostly the Black Causas members who tanked the bill for the Democrats? Some leadership on the part of Sen. Obama, right? Oh wait, that’s right, thanks to the GOP, Acorn (whom Obama used to work for teaching people how to manage voter fraud) and similar groups got funds to them ripped from the bill along with bankrupcy protections (call Joe Biden!)
Are you going to have a blog post on Lacy Clay in 2004 saying that regulators were trying to lynch Franklin Raines at Fannie Mae and that he was doing an outstanding job and that Fannie Mae was doing a great job too?
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/09/memory_lane_lynching_franklin.html
Will any honest adults ever show up at the PD?
The federal government is out of control. Yesterday, for one vote the people found our voice. But it will be quickly lost in the din of special interest, partisan, bureaucratic bawling over denied power and delayed socialism.
Many proposals have been suggested that do not involve giving a corrupt SecTreas supreme powers to manipulate markets, reward cronies, and abuse taxpayer funds. Social engineering, political pandering, and bureaucratic bullying by our federal government created this financial debacle. Now, the government is insisting on more of the same as the only solution.
Media talking heads, pundits, bloggers, and demagogues from both ends of the political spectrum are too busy playing partisan gotcha to look closely at what put us here. The knee jerk solution of urgent intervention with huge new unfunded liabilities and more government tinkering may buy a few votes, but will simply add to the immense burden of government excess that is destroying our nation’s economy and heritage of independence.
clay and akin are good company. both are absolute mental midgets who deserve retirement in the real world where they would actually have to work. pelosi is a convenient target, but whatever her remarks doesn’t take away from the point, as brooks made in today’s NYT, that the united states has an absolute failure in political leadership. it appears that the us is not just financially broke but politically as well as. meanwhile in the background we have the bluster–McCain–and the bored–Obama. Bush is wandering around like the utterly failure of a president that he is in.
CENTRIST:
100% correct!
“Will any honest adults ever show up at the PD?”
Not as long as they can help it. I keep thinking that Lee Interp. will finally ‘lay off’ the rest of them but not yet!
“They” will continue to pump out “There is a crisis.” to try and build support for their man Obama… same as Queen Nancy.
Lets look at our leadership for this bailout bill.
Bush “this sucker is going down”
Paulson left Goldman Sachs at peak market value and was required to sell his holdings without any capital gains taxes. Are you telling me he didn’t know what the maekets were doing with these toxic mortgages.
McCain an economic illiterate.
Obama above the fray; don’t expose yourself.
Pelosi, Frank clearly knew they didn’t have the votes.
This was a bad bill and deserved to be voted down.
The market and the Fed have properly handled the failures of Wamu and Wachovia.
.
> Will any honest adults ever show up at the PD?
So long as the blogs remain, you and I will be here, Centrist. As far as having anyone as a paid staffer … probably not. But in case Mr. Mink is looking for somebody to provide balance to the Post’s editorial positions, I’m an experienced and skilled writer who delivers columns to exact word count and on deadline, every time, no exceptions.
Hey CENTRIST and jjk, how did you like our girl on CBS? Quite a performance, the one where she was asked to name some of the media outlets she uses as sources of information. She couldn’t name one paper, one magizine, one program period. She didn’t even name Rush. Imagine. She wasn’t even clever enough to name CBS (after all she was on CBS). But hey, she’s one of those best and brightest that our boy McCain is bringing to Washington. I never realized that being ignorant was one of the qualities for being a maverick.
Almost forgot you Nick. Define honest for me. The reason why I asked is that honesty usually includes an iota of information, not just opinion. It helps to have a few facts to back up what you say. I am not just talking about finding anybody with a mouth but someone who actually has the information to support their opinion even if it may differ with yours.
I can admit that the same fact may lead to a different opinion depending on your value system, but you need to at least have a reliable one.
1* - yep!
Palin Fan- I don’t watch CBS or watch anything that Eddie Roth posts.
I’m hearing what sounds like narcissism from one of my favorite buddies on here. (lol).
I think that the PD should offer him a job!