There is some interesting talk out there about how this is the classic prisoner's dilemma. Basically, this bill needs to pass. But it is unpopular with the public, so no one wants to be on record as voting for it. So, most every politician want the following: For the bill to pass but to have voted against it. But, of course, if everyone votes that way, then it won't pass.

Google prisoners dilemma and bailout bill. I am sure you can find a better summary of the situation than my ham-handed attempt.

The whole thing is a facinating view of applied game theory.

On some level, since Democrats have the votes, I wonder why they don't write and vote on a bill for which they would be willing to take the political heat. Instead of using $700 billion of taxpayer money, loan the money to the agency that will give it out, and pay back the loan with a temporary 0.25% tax on securities trades that will automatically expire after the loan is payed back with interest. People have speculated that such an approach would pay back the loan in 5-6 years.

To the contrary. I'm not blaming Democrats. I'm saying that the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves if they truly wanted this to pass, yet they failed to pass it with a pretty solid majority of the House. They had enough votes to pass this bill without getting a single Republican vote.

I would note that the backlash against earmarks has been pretty heavy of late. I'm guessing that the $25B earmark to the auto industry didn't help ease those concerns in the House.

Yep, unfortunatly the public sees it as a "giveaway" to banks but don't realize if they fail, they are going to suffer pretty damned badly. They just don't realize what their anger has done. :(

As Bob Schieffer said that prior to the last bill, only FOUR Republicans raised their hands when Paulson asked who was going to vote for the Bill. This is quite a bit more than 4 GOP votes for the new bill.

just to help you out MBBF

The spin is that Pelosi's speech was so partisan that it killed the GOP support. Pelosi trumped McCain.

Paulson had a roomfull of all the GOP members?

I need to read her speech. The GOP congressmen seem pretty ticked about it.

I had not heard that. My comments had nothing to do with that. I'm certainly not a fan of Pelosi, but I'll leave that for a Pelosi thread. :)

Regardless, it doesn't matter how many GOP members she did or didn't irritate. Her own party did not even fall in line behind her. This vote certainly is a power check for the Democratic leadership. They said they had a bi-partisan agreement in place. From the looks of the vote, there wasn't even a partisan agreement in place.

It's quite possible that Palin's made more stupid statements in the 4 weeks she's been in the limelight than Biden has made in his almost 3 decades of service at the federal level. :D

95 dems voted against it.

Now THAT is false. She may do some good work given a few years, but Biden has her covered overall. Given the chance, she may chase him down. :D

yeah. both of my parents are economists (dad has a phd) and they're really worried (as am i) that people are not seeing the full picture

My fix of your quote is equally right and evidence over the past 10 days are spot on with the events. You may not be wrong since it's your opinion but mine is equally right.

I don't think you understand the politics behind this. There was no way the democrats were going to force this through without republican support. It would have made them far, far too vulnerable.

You can criticize the dems for not just forcing it through, but I think that's unfair given the situation. Of the five major parties involved (executive, senate repubs, senate dems, house repubs, house dems), the house repubs were the only ones not on board. They have to take the bulk of the blame if this situation blows up due to inaction.

I wish Bloomberg had run. I think, if he did, would have a real opportunity to steal the show right now.

Dems are saying they brought more "yeah" votes than planned and that the reason it was that number was in conjunction with the planned amount from the GOP.

I assume that this is assumed to be worked out behind the scenes and the actual vote is just a stamp so.

GOP strategists are saying that this is 'devastating' to McCain because the economy drags on and the ideology of the GOP got us into this mess and now the GOP wont let us fix it. - CNBC

Interesting. I wonder if the GOP congressmen don't much care about this since McCain has trashed them in his attempt to become a change candidate.

You've obviously missed my point. I certainly understand exactly that. I stated that both sides were saving their own ass. My only point was that if they truly wanted to pass it, the Democrats certainly could have done that without any GOP support. They knew it was a flawed bill. I haven't blamed anyone. I said the Dems have to look at their own party if they want to assess blame since they couldn't muster support within their own party.

As I stated before, this has far more to do with the general public voicing their concerns. There's no one to blame. It's a lousy bill that didn't pass and I'm glad both sides saw that.

I won't bother throwing anything in the trash. I'm actually happy that you produced something that you could believe supported your position. I had begun to wonder.

I think has more to do with them just not wanting their name on this bill. This is going to be wildly unpopular among Republican rank-and-file, and there is only few weeks before their elections. A lame-duck congress would pass this in a blink.

If this gets much messier, the GOP may want to throw this election and let someone else dig out of this hole. :) I'm guessing that the challenger is going to have a great shot at getting elected in 2012 no matter who ends up in the White House.

When have they ever?

Barney Franks: "The Republicans are saying that someone hurt their feelings, and so they are punishing the country by not passing this bill? Tell you what, give me the twelve names that changed their vote, and I'll talk uncharacteristically nice to them."

The Pelosi was too mean argument is ridiculous. Vote for or against the bill, but don't try and blame your decision on a speech almost no one heard.

Again, when did Republicans become such pussies?

I don't suppose you'd like to give us their thoughts in a 3ish paragraph nutshell? QS put it perfectly either in this thread or the recession thread- (paraphrasing) we're all pretty intelligent people if we're arguing over the nuance of politics, but the entire economy is so big, it's hard to get your head around so there's no concept as to whether any number of forms of bailouts are a good idea or not.

SI

Reminds me of a political comic I saw during the primary where the Democrats realize how screwed up things are and decide they don't want the job, so they all drop out. The Republicans now realize they might win and that terrifies them so they call out the Democrats for being unpatriotic and abandoning America.

The other thing to consider is how much worse can things get? Things are bound to be better in 4 years than they are now (I sure as hell hope so), no matter who is in charge. If so, the incumbent may be able to coast to re-election a la Reagan in 84.

CNN is playing Pelosi comments. Yeah. She basically said this was all the White House's fault, and the party is over. Very bi-partisan.

fivethirtyeight.com notes that of the 38 incumbents in close races, the vote was 30-8 against, and pretty much among the others.

It reads pretty tepid to me, but I haven't heard the delivery.

talk to me after dinner tonight and i'll have more of a coherent thought fresh off their lips.

*shurg* Saying the dems didn't vote for it because its a flawed bill and that they couldn't muster support with their own party I think reveals that you don't understand the politics of the bill and why it failed.

not to play thread-police, but shouldn't the economic posts be in the recession thread?

That wasn't her speech. She doesn't address herself when speaking I'm pretty sure.

not when it effects the race so much, IMO.

Yeah, this is more about the political fallout. The direct financials are the other thread.

I don't think Pelosi's speech was a very good idea, but since when did Republicans take over as the party of whiners? They should be voting on whether or not the bill is good for the country. If Pelosi's speech really did affect their vote, then that's pretty sad. What happened to the tough, take no prisoners Republican party that we've seen since 1994?

People talk about Republicans abandoning their conservative principles, but now it seems like they've abandoned their testicles too.

That's been gone for a long time.

As far as I can tell that's the main portion of her remarks. Maybe there was an intro that wasn't included, but that's certainly the bulk of what she said.

Well from what I've seen on google finance ...

Sovereign Bancorp, Inc. SOV -69.06% 1.72B
National City Corporation NCC -58.22% 1.20B
Genworth Financial, Inc. GNW -40.91% 2.08B
Fifth Third Bancorp FITB -38.12% 5.78B

Now bearing in mind the last banks to post drops like that folded within days its looking like it'll be a lively few days unless some sort of rescue plan is passed promptly.

awful awful timing to have a Jewish holiday ;)

:lol::lol::lol::lol:

Sorry, but that's too much for my cynical self to let pass. Good for the country? Congresscritters? Are you f'ing kidding me?

I was just reading about National City (since it owns my mortgage), and they were saying that this was ridiculous. They are not as deep in the sub-prime as Wamu, and that they were still fluid. Of course, now the stock has lost half its value, either someone will swoop in and swallow it, or people will get scared and pull their money, and they will fail.

:)

Well sure, but they could at least fake it. I'm just surprised that they've taken the whiner approach. This is not the party of Karl Rove anymore.

They're out Democrat-ing the Democrats. This is bad for McCain, not only because Economics is something he's getting killed on being in the news for.. but...

http://www.time.com/time/business/ar...845325,00.html

But the candidate with the most riding on Monday's vote is McCain, who backed the concerns of conservatives in the House over the initial agreement. "John McCain stood up for House Republicans," said Representative Spencer Bachus, an Alabama Republican who was involved in early negotiations. "He stood up to the Administration. John McCain vastly improved this bill."

But if a majority of the House Republicans don't vote for the measure, McCain could lose political face. "If McCain cannot persuade them, it is hard to portray him as a leader," said Clyde Wilcox, a political science professor at Georgetown University.

I heard exactly the same about WaMu just before it went down ... bah now I'm spreading 'fear' just like the media, but to be honest I think most of the recent bank 'failures' have been failures of confidence not of the banks themselves.

All it takes now is the rating agencies looking at the share price drops and downgrading those banks (as happened with WaMu) and hey presto, instant failures/cheap purchases for the surviving banks ...

She ad-libbed.

Most Emailed News Stories

Yeah, that was the part they played on CNN and pissed the GOP off.

She did this time...

YouTube - Dems for Bailout: Pelosi #1 "anything goes mentality"

What IS the full picture? I'm an economics light weight...I go to work and get a paycheck. I have no stock invested in any mortgage or financial institution, I don't have a mortgage, I don't work for a mortgage or financial institution, so I'm not sure where "I" fall into all of this.

I'm having a hard time of: "Separating the chaff from the whey?" or however that saying goes, to put it simply.

If it's only going to be hard for a year or two (if there is no bailout), then I say, "F" em, too bad. If this will indeed cause millions of jobs to be lost, then let's get this bailout rolling.

If you or anyone could point me to a link or something that explains this mess in laymans terms (without the politics), that would be awesome.

Millions of Jobs lost
Millions of homes in Foreclosure
More bad assets on the books everywhere
Small business failings left and right as credit becomes unavailable
Major business failings on a lesser scale but prominent as theyll be unable to get new debt or refinance old

Basically an entire seizure of the engine.

Pain on a scale we havnt seen in our generation.

IMO, w/ the bailout as its stated, if implemented as I see it, the engine will slow to a crawl and standards will rise but the engine will be able to be restarted. W/o it you'll suffer pain and a lot of it, until someone comes up with an FDR like way of starting the economy again (with the world economy as a little help).

the above is only my opinion.