Senate Bailout Hearings in Pictures (update) - Part 3
Wall Street investment bankers are generally rich and Republican
Ex-Goldman Sachs Chairman and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was afraid the Democrats were going to quash his Paulson Plan because it would bailout the rich bankers
Deal is almost done
Then, who crashes the party? Who are these House Republicans?
Led by their ringleader
Leading to Hank's kneeling appeal to Saint Nancy:
From New York Times Fate of Bailout Plan Remains Unresolved
Friday morning, on CBS’s “The Early Show,” Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the lead Democratic negotiator, said the bailout had been derailed by internal Republican politics.
“I didn’t know I was going to be the referee for an internal G.O.P. ideological civil war,” Mr. Frank said, according to The A.P.Thursday, in the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up” by withdrawing her party’s support for the package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.
“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Ms. Pelosi said, a wry reference to Mr. Paulson’s kneeling, according to someone who observed the exchange. She went on: “It’s not me blowing this up, it’s the Republicans.”
Mr. Paulson sighed. “I know. I know.”
If any deal needed blowing up it was this one.
Let the Wall Street crowd step up to the plate with their checkbooks and at the very least be partners in paying off this debacle.
Since the Democrats are the majority party in both houses of Congress you have to ask yourself why they just didn't go ahead and pass their plan on their own and take all the credit??
Ooops, if it flopped that would mean they got all the blame too. 700 billion dollars plus worth. That's a pretty huge millstone to have hung around your neck.
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Everybody, and I mean everybody, wants to see Wall Street step up. Wall Street won't because they are money-smart and don't have the appetite for in essence, once in a lifetime risk. So forget that.
I thought the Democrats would be against the bailout simply because it's not in the interest of Main Street, the Democrats' constituent base. I was surprised by the stance of the House Republicans. Yes, their middle America Red state constituency would see the bailout as a disgraceful form of socialism or a free fat cat meal ticket, mirroring your stance. But I had thought that President Bush and the Republican thinking Wall Street crowd, including Paulson, was pushing the plan as part of the Republican agenda, so the internal Republican battle was unexpected.
Neither the Democrats not the Republicans want to touch this toxic event... that's why every other word coming out of Washington is "bipartisan".
The truth of the matter is no bailout and no resolution is much scarier than "the bailout" because the markets are still in complete paralysis. Imagine what happens if there is no bailout and no lending AT ALL (because that is what is happening and will continue) until November 3... bankruptcies at all levels of the economy would send the global economies into a death spiral. WAMU's dissolution quicker than expected because of the bailout delays... in part, they couldn't meet their short term debt obligations.
The European countries' finance ministers have been disdainful of what they consider America's mess, but the rest of the globe had better watch out and support what is happening here because the American economy is the First Domino. The bailout should plunge the dollar, but instead, it seems it is being supported.
Dollar vs. Euro
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"It’s the Republicans”? Not hardly.
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but the Democrats control both houses of Congress. They don't need ANY Republican votes to pass this package... However, the current mess was CAUSED by these same Democrats, who now bemoan the GOP's failure to act.
What caused our nation to come to near financial failure? It was massive social-engineering programs created by the same Democrats that encouraged Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, et al., to make low-money-down and no-money-down mortgages available to precisely those people most likely to default on their loans at the first sign of trouble.
For this mess you can thank Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and the other ultra-liberal Democrats who first pushed these socialist programs on America's financial community -- and who are now in charge of the action (or inaction) of the Congress. "It’s the Republicans”? Balderdash.
It is time to clean house, and not just in the Executive branch of the federal government.
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You'll have to put into context that it's Nancy Pelosi saying, "it's the Republicans". I'd also say that more of the blame for the mess would be attributable to commercial interests - Wall Street, which engineered another way to make money - than political. Most fiscal conservatives registered some surprise the Democrats seemed to easily back this Bush/Paulson led bailout, which supports Wall Street more than Main Street (note the liberal stance is one of wariness). Then, I had thought the House Republicans wanted to quash the bailout as socialist program / taxpayer burden, which in normal circumstances is admirable. But the Democrats are saying tonight that the House Republicans' alternative is a true bailout of Wall Street fat cats, the opposite of what I expected from House Republicans protecting their Main Street constituency from a socialism inducing tax burden. Frankly, the political positions revolving around this bailout are too complex, it's way over my head and hard to predict.
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Update: clarifying the viewpoint of the House Republicans http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/27/business/27repubs.html?ref=business
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