Has anyone stopped to consider that the bailout was proposed out of nowhere by Bush & Paulson?

[brentspeak]

They were the ones who suddenly jumped in front of the cameras and declared that the arbitrary figure of $700 billion needed to be immediately forked-over. They were the ones who claimed that financial Armageddon would occur if a bailout bill wasn't passed right away, right now.

They essentially manufactured the drama and the stock market crash that we saw today. If there wasn't a vote on this today, the market would not have crashed like this today. It might not have crashed at all today. That's not to say that the current financial crisis is make-believe; but it was made worse, at this present time, by an act of make-believe ("There must be a bailout, right here and right now! Or else!")

[grahamhgreen]

1. NOW the Dems can BLAME IT ALL ON THE REPUBS - IF THEY DO NOTHING!

1) It is a failure of Reaganomics/WTO/FTA/deregulation/neo-conservativism/objectivism/Ayn Rand/Greenspan.

2) Dems can say - we tried to pass a bill to fix it - Repubs rejected it.


3) Now we can suggest:

+ Put 700b into prosecuting those that got us into this mess,

+ siezing their assets,

+ and rebuilding America's infrastructure.

+ As well as starting the new economy of single-payer not-for-profit healthcare,

+ the new economy of unlimited, sustainable energy.

+ Ending the war, prosecuting the war profiteers and re-collecting the funds stolen by these profiteers.

[SammyWinstonJack]

2. Meanwhile back at the ranch, they want us all to run around with our hair on fire. I will not do

that!

[anigbrowl]

3. You're wrong. Market-watchers have been demanding action for months.

It was not a crisis manufactured by the two of them. I have been anticipating a market crash like this since July 2007.

[brentspeak]

4. "Market-watchers" is a pretty broad generalization

There are quite a lot of "market-watchers" out there -- like millions of people who consider themselves "market-watchers". Somehow, I doubt that there was consensus among these millions of market-watchers.

And among those market-watchers who have been "demanding action", who among them demanded that this particular action be taken, and at this particular time (i.e., just as Congress was about to recess?)

[Daemonaquila]

5. A good thought, but not quite accurate.

It didn't come out of "nowhere." In fact, this proposal was being bandied around for a number of weeks before anyone every heard a peep. They were working on the "emergency" bill before there ever was an emergency. They could've brought it to Congress for real debate at a leisurely pace, but chose not to - it was all about pushing through the legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act, with panicking, unthinking legislators.

I'm not really impressed by the crash. Look, economists had been saying that they expect the Dow to hit 8,000 before its all over. Whether the market takes out 777 points in one day, or loses the same in a longer period, isn't going to make a lot of difference. If anything, the crunch today is a good thing. Once again we had an ugly day on Wall Street, and the world didn't end. It'll be harder to make the same argument for the next bill because of it.