As far as I know from my early reading of the Draft, they have carte blanch to do whatever they want in order to “stabilize” the economy. Hope I’m wrong about that, but that was my understanding of it. I guess Paulson becomes the Credit Czar,if it passes in the House Thursday.
I wasn’t able to keep track of who voted Yes, but I think at least one of my Senators voted Yes.
Well let’s be clear though - this is a new bill that the Senate passed. The House still has to vote on this new bill on Friday before Bush can sign it into law. So there is technically still two days of hope to convince the House to vote it down.
…There’s more headbanging in this thread than a Metallica concert.
So there is technically still two days of hope to convince the House to vote it down.
Be that as it may, I don’t expect the House to vote against it, and thereby come across as the bad guys. They all know that the tax payers do not want it – some for the wrong reasons, but still, they have been speaking out against it. And I guess technically, the Senate does not represent the people anyhow, but rather their state, but both my Senators voted for the damned thing!
I did notice something, however, I don’t know that they voted for the legislation by the same name as they have been calling it, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. At least the bit of C-SPAN I watched where they were debating it didn’t have that title up there. So, I wonder if in some way they are pulling a fast one: Yes, the people are against the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, but that isn’t what we voted on tonight. I hope they were not that sleazy about it, but they also never acknowledged that it was their legislation that got us to this mess in the first place, and never wanted to reverse such legislation. The very same problem is going to be there, and I guess they will be calling for another bail-out in a few year’s time.
All I heard listening to the senators speaking was essentially “this bill isn’t ideal, but we have to act or we’ll suffer because credits frozen”. They do not seem to understand at all why banks aren’t lending as much or to each other. They think that throwing more paper money at it is the solution. If I write my reps again for the house voting I will (in addition) stress the real reason for the tight lending. If I understand it right these two articles help shed some light on why:
“There has always been a stigma attached to borrowing directly from the Fed and for good reason. If a bank can’t get other banks to lend it money, that tells the market something about the condition of the bank in question. Last August, Bernanke convinced three large banks to borrow at the discount window in an effort to remove that stigma. When that didn’t work, he concocted a scheme to allow banks to borrow from the Fed in anonymity via a mechanism he called the Term Auction Facility. When Bear Stearns blew up, he added the Term Securities Lending Facility for investment banks. By removing the stigma of borrowing from the Fed and hiding the identity of the borrowers, Bernanke removed important information from the market.”
“By implying that it will [meddle in the economy], government actually impedes the free market from functioning as it should since distressed bank management are hoping to preserve their operations through government action, rather than lose their banks in recapitalizations.”
Is it just barely possible the Dow went down the other day because the bill came close enough to passing the house that its eventual passage is inevitable?
I was only able to e-mail one of my senators, as for some reason the other senator’s website rejected my message for some reason. Perhaps an influx of e-mails?
Anyhow, the good thing is that the one that did receive my message responded that she opposed the package, but her reasons are flawed. She thinks this crisis came about by a failed philosophy (good) that rewards greed (not good). I sent her a response clarifying my position on government intervention and hopefully all makes some impact.
The house is voting on the bill tonight right? Hopefully those who gave a principled stand against the bill continue to do so. We need all the luck in the world.
