U.S. lawmakers try to revise bailout plan

I suppose that I am heavily influenced by the fact that most of my money is in the banking system and not in the market, not directly anyway. However, I think that raising the deposit insurance limit may be a good way to address individual concerns without necessarily requiring a large present outlay. I'm not sure how the Feds would reserve for such a contingency anyway.

However, the idea of suspending the marking to market rules should be approached much more carefully. If banks buy and hold, losses are not just paper losses except when valued as a going concern. When valued at liquidation value they are actual losses. Similarly, gains actual gains only if realized. Otherwise they are paper gains against which future lending is speculative.

What a joke! I'm siding Main Street on this one - why the hell should the fat cats in the finance and banking sectors get multimillion dollar bailouts when Joe Six-pack loses his house from under him?

This bailout sends all the wrong messages to the finance and banking sector chiefs, essentially "We can plough our businesses into the ground and destroy shareholder value, and going by the precedent set by the Bush administration back in '08, we're confidant te government will bail us out."

The banks and finance houses behind this meltdown should be left to take responsibility and be left to sink under the weight of their own huge misjudgments.

Meanwhile, not surprisingly at all...

"Historic Disapproval: Bush Hits All-Time Low Amid Economic Meltdown"

Just two presidents have had lower approval (Richard Nixon and Harry Truman) than President Bush, and none has had higher disapproval in polls since 1938.

McCain's problem: Fifty-three percent of registered voters think he'd lead the country in the same direction as Bush, inching back up over a majority. Forty-eight percent of registered voters are uncomfortable about McCain's age, a new high. And while Obama has advanced since mid-June in the sense that he's a "safe" choice for president, to 55 percent, McCain has lost ground on this measure; 51 percent now see him as safe, down 6 points."

http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/Politics/story?id=5920248&page=1

Heh, bush's "legacy" is going to be even more screwed.

The timing of this economic crisis is perfect - right at the tailend of bush's term - if it occurred at the start of the new president's term, the new president would cop some of the blame, but this crisis and its implications are just a perfect ending to the term of conclusively The worst US president in modern history.

USA! USA! USA!

Bush noted that the maximum $700 billion in the proposed bailout was huge, but was dwarfed by the $1 trillion in lost wealth that resulted from Monday’s stock market plunge.

The difference to me is that the $700 billion WILL come from tax payers of all classes, including the very poor, and those who rely on government programs for their daily needs. Meanwhile the potential $1 trillion in lost wealth would likely only go to investors and profiteering stock corporations.

McCain put his reputation on the line saying that he was sure he could get both sides to agree to this bill, but 2/3rds of his own republicans nixed the bill. Don't look so good for all that experience he says he has let alone for his supposed ability to unite both sides for bipartisan efforts.

The difference to me is that the $700 billion WILL come from tax payers of all classes, including the very poor,

The very poor don't pay taxes. Most of the $700 billion tax bill will be paid for by the rich and by corporations.

The very poor don't pay taxes.

The very poor don't pay income taxes.

Do you people believes that $700bilion bailout can saving america or the western world out of troubles? That was just tip of an iceberg! A bigger meltdown is coming after this! Bush was worst of all US president... worst than Harding,Hoover!

Oversight in this context is a code word for "finger in the cash box". The more congressional oversight, the more pork at taxpayers expense.

The rich and the poor will pay less then the middle class. with all the loop holes and places to hide money, they pay very little taxes compared to the middle class.

The middle class are suffering and their 401s and IRAs are in jepordy. But the republicans cry and vote 'no' because their feelings are hurt. Ohhhhhhhhh. They run back home with their $100,000 + salaries and can't help the nation. < :-)

My advise to lawmakers, call in sick. It doesn't matter what party you belong to or how "good" the bill is; if you vote for this you will have trouble getting re-elected. People are mad and when people get mad, they take it out on the nearest politician.

The Republicans are trying to find a way to blame the Democrats. If you listened to Fox News you would think that Obama had a personal hand in the entire financial crisis.

Meanwhile, McCain continues to take credit for solving the economic crisis. However, someone neglected to tell McCain that the problem is still there and no decision has been made yet on the bailout proposal.

Aren't we glad John McCain suspended his campaign so he could come back and save the country. That's real leadership.

John McCain's leadership helped bring a favorable outcome, right? It did get passed, didn't it? He's running his campaign!!

Damn must be Barack Obama's fault. < :-)

Yes it is McCain to the rescue. It is a bit like going to Dodge City to clean it up, right! And having this 'awesome' reputation as a maverick everyone would just be happy to see him. Well the reality is that they had some kind of a tentative deal before he arrived. My view is that McCain loss it yelled profanities at a few people as he normally does and contributed to depth-charging what ever agreement they had. McCain is yesterdays man, he reminds me of the former FBI director Hoover without the frocks. Suspend his campaign! That is just a joke, how stupid does he think people are, then again it is America.

I actually give McCain credit for at least trying. Obama was smarter politically by not getting involved, as one newspaper said, "He realized he can't control Democrats and Republicans in Congress." But it is a bit concerning for me to watch McCain at least try to help and get bashed for it. We're basically telling politicians that we'll give them credit for keeping their hands clean when in reality they should be the ones cleaning up the mess.

A sign of the McCain's so-called leadership skills: the number of Arizona House members who voted for the bailout? ZERO. Even Bush, with little political capital, managed to help wrangle 9 "yes" votes from the regulation-unfriendly Texas contingent. McCain did achieve a kind of bipartisan cooperation I guess, if you mean both Republican and Democrat representatives from his home state (4 GOP, 4 Democrat) blew him off.

McCain has been all over the news blaming Obama (in now-classic McCain fashion, his usual line is "Obama and the Democrats kept the bill from passage, but now is not the time to fix blame" hypocritically 1) fixing blame and 2) lying, since it's the Republicans who killed the bill by a 2/3rds majority), but 50% of the Illinois members of the House, including 2 of 8 Republicans (1 abstaining), voted yes on the bailout bill. Assuming McCain is being sincere in claiming he wanted the bill passed and would spare no efforts in getting it done (not clear since he is ideologically opposed to these kinds of bailouts) . . . he is the one didn't get it done. And this is when he was supposedly focused on one thing and one thing only, imagine when he has to deal with multiple problems.

Superlib - "Most of the $700 billion tax bill will be paid for by the rich and by corporations."

I sincerely hope you are not serious.

How do you spell 'T-a-x H-a-v-e-n'?

Most of the rich and corporation execs know places like the Cayman Islands very well.

"Obama was smarter politically by not getting involved"

He didn't get involved because he's clueless as to what to do about the problem his cheating advisors helped create.

The events unfolding in front of us are just incredible:

1/ A massive Republican-led revolt against this bailout bill, driven largely by the millions of angry constituents writing and e-mailing their senators saying (in effect) "Vote against this bill if you want my vote!)

2/ Bush 44 - sorry, john mccain - a man who for 20 years has been campaigning for financial industry deregulation - does an about turn almost overnight and starts campaigning FOR regulatory oversight, actually 'suspends' his campaign while keeping it running and simply moving it to Washington, headbutts into the Congressional fray, attends a grand total of ZERO negotiation meetings causing some of his own party members to rebuke him, claims victory mere minutes before the bill and the floor falls out from under him in a rejection of the bailout package led by 2/3 of REPUBLICANS who vote against it, and then in true john mccain bipartisan style (as chardk1 says) claims "Obama and the Democrats kept the bill from passage, but now is not the time to fix blame."

3/ bush's popularity ratings sink to the lowest level in living memory.

4/ bush, who has long enjoyed the undying support of his loyal Republicans, finds himself near-totally deserted in his finest hour of complete and utter failure as the final weeks of his final term disappear deep into the murky depths of abject, complete and total failure-soaked political nothingness.

Absolutely awesome!

sarge - "He didn't get involved because he's clueless as to what to do about the problem his cheating advisors helped create."

I think you and john mccain are the ones who are clueless.

bush, who has long enjoyed the undying support of his loyal Republicans, finds himself near-totally deserted in his finest hour of complete and utter failure as the final weeks of his final term disappear deep into the murky depths of abject, complete and total failure-soaked political nothingness.

Here here!

And it just gets better for America -

"Now, with the financial crisis front and center, Bush has reappeared on the landscape and the race is no longer an Obama referendum.

The damage is registering powerfully on the electoral map and in state and national polling, officials say. McCain has lost ground in at least eight key swing states, and the officials say his path to victory is so narrow that it allows virtually no room for error.

Recent polls have shown Obama ahead in Colorado, Michigan and Pennsylvania, with gains in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana and New Mexico.

Two recent national tracking polls – from Gallup and The Hotline – both show Obama enjoying a six-point lead. A Washington Post-ABC News poll out Tuesday night showed Obama with a four-point advantage among likely voters (50 to 46), down from an anomalous nine points the week before."

FREE SARAH PALIN!

Ehhrr....does anyone know where Sarah Palin is???

What has been fascinating to me is hearing House minority leader John Boehrner and John McCain complain that the Democrats are responsible for the bill failing because Pelosi and Obama weren't persuasive enough in getting more Republicans to buy into the bailout. Uh guys, so at this critical time, on this critical issue, after you claimed this was the only thing you would be working on, your excuse is that the Democratic leaders in Congress didn't do your jobs for you?

It's getting pretty obvious how McCain's "bipartisan leadership" operates - say "I'm da bipartisan leader" loudest and oftenest and challenge the Democrat counterpart to actually do all the heavy lifting for both parties so you can take credit for everything if it works and blame the other guy if it doesn't, and all throughout do a lot of press conferences bragging about how you get results when in fact you can't even get a single congressman from your own state in your own party to support you on the solution you endorsed for the self-proclaimed biggest financial crisis of the past 80 years. That's some fine leadership.

sushi,

we need to immediately identify every house that can be seen from Russia in order to find her!

seriously, she will resign soon. Even the republicans want her gone now. The sane ones.

sushi, will bush break the obuchi support rating of 9 percent? Its possible. He has five more months to screw up and destroy something else beyond the government, the military, the economy, the schools, the medical industry, the reputation of the US abroad, North Korea, the middle east, Iraq, Iraq and last Iraq.

First there was FREE TIBET!

Now it's FREE SARAH PALIN!

Zurc, I hear she and her family (including someone called "Willow") are down on mccain's ranch learning stuff she's never known before to prep up for tomorrow's debate against Joe Biden.

'pparently, the first thing she was instructed to remember was that humans did NOT, in fact, co-exist with dinosaurs as she has apparently claimed:

www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/28/palin-claimed-dinosaurs-a_n_130012.html

and some irrelevant stuff about Supreme court cases:

www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/29/latest-palin-gaffe-cant-n_n_130395.html

SushiSake do you post all your stuff elsewhere as well? Cos you could bury Palin (and clowns) with the dinosaurs with your efforts. Keep it up, and down with stupid choices for the future.

chibaman - Do you have anything to say about the topic at hand, which is the U.S. taxpayers' bailout of Wall Street?

I read this on Yahoo:

Based on the U.S. Census Bureau's estimate of the current population of about 305 million people, each person would have to pay $2,300 to fund the $700,000,000,000. If each American (including children) paid a dollar a day, it would take more than six years to pay the money in full. One might argue, however, that this $700 billion would be a modest splash in the bucket of national debt, which already stands at well over $9 trillion (which means you already owe $31,642 each).

Wow! American taxpayers are in deep doo doos.

Taxes, taxes, taxes...the very poor don't pay taxes... Not putting all that into quotes, but I am just summarizing a section of this thread and one of the central themes in it.

Let me tell you all, everyone pays taxes. Even the very very poor, well if they don't they soon will, if they are going to live.

Here's a few ways that most everyone is going to be taxed and taxed and taxed.

I don't think America has ever had anything like GST? or VAT? Could be wrong. Someone can correct me if you like. But these are all forms of tax added to things you buy, principally food, and beverages, and those luxury goods that even the very poor want to buy, and here I'm talking about tobacco. I call this a tax but its really a negative tax, a way for the State to keep money it formerly had to spend on you. I've mentioned most of them here before, they are the remaining vestiges of Roosevelt's New Deal, social security itself (and here think Superannuation). Other funding types to be slashed include the following: Medicare. Medicaid, and funding usually given out to education, public transportation, the national parks/environment, etc. These will all be slashed to ribbons.

Yes, if that bailout goes through Americans are going to pay for it, and that means extracting money from where-ever it can be found out of the system - I mean the one you live within.

Barack Obama and the Democrats have supported the Republican concept of a bailout from the get go. You have to wonder why too, since its the Democrats who control both sides of the house! If they really were concerned at all about their support base amongst the RAPIDLY growing ranks of the working class you would think they would have backed an option that their supporters would support. And principles have nothing to do with it, because those who benefit directly from this bailout are the Goldman Sachs of Wall Street. But only for a limited time.

"American taxpayers are in deep doo doos"

That's why we're going to eliminate foreign aid. Nyuk nyuk nyuk!

This bailout plan is so bad, 90 some Democrats voted against it.

Sarge - "That's why we're going to eliminate foreign aid."

But in recent weeks you've been proclaiming American foreign aid to China and Africa as good!

Why the 180-degree U-turn?

Sushi - Apparently you don't know what "Nyuk nyuk nyuk!" means. It means I was kidding. Of course we're not going to eliminate foreign aid. Especially to China. Wait a minute, don't we owe China $500 billion? Why are we giving aid to China? Heck, they should be giving aid to us!