Unbelievable!What else can be said?
I am completely shocked by what transpired yesterday not because the market plunged… it was bound to sink to unsettling lows at some point during this cataclysmic meltdown… but because Congress actually listened to constituents and made the morally correct choice with 95 of 235 Democrats and 133 of 198 Republicans voting in opposition to the massive Wall Street bailout bill.
Let’s not forget the depth and extent of the narrative of dire circumstances and certain and immediate collapse used by Bernanke and Paulson to hold members of Congress and, by association, all Americans hostage to this mega Wall Street bailout.
For that reason alone, no matter where you came down ideologically on the bill, it seemed that you had to accept that the bill would pass.
The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Secretary and the President of the United States specifically stated that the American economy, and more broadly the entire world financial system, would literally collapse should the bill not pass … and it doesn’t pass!
That’s surely a far cry from the days when minute and barely comprehensible Greenspan mutterings like “irrational exuberance” would instantly drop markets around the world… the Feds gravitas has clearly been played out.
To be fair, Wall Street is, more or less, still listening intently but I think the fact the Main Street and their political representatives were brought to the precipice by such traditionally important figures and instead of cowering and acquiescing to being fleeced, very boldly, flipped them one seriously fat bird has got to indicate something... though, to be honest I’m not quite sure what.
Are American’s overconfident? Do they posses some heretofore unforeseen and untapped mettle in the face of dire economic circumstances? Have they just simply collectively gone postal?!?! … I mean they just watched like 1 trillion dollars of stock market wealth go up in smoke in a single day!
Perhaps there is just one very large and very vocal legion of independent minded citizens out there that took to the phone fax and email in the days building up to this vote and scared the wits out of house members who already seemed all but doomed by an election season that looks set to punish incumbents.
Well, whatever the reason, it didn’t pass and it looks as if legislators will have a significantly harder time building coalitions to support a follow-up bill as legislators divide along party lines and the election rhetoric kicks into high gear.
