The House of Representatives is supposed to vote today on the $700 billion rescue package.
Many have opposed the measure, railing that its a giveaway to Wall Street.
In truth, the giveaway already happened -- all those bankers and CEOs already walked off with their obscene bonuses, year after year, for most of the last decade. Most of them will survive their downtime just fine (though these events are going to be a huge blow to the New York Metro area).
But its increasingly clear that this crisis is coming to "Main Street" in a big hurry. (Please join below.)
From Marketwatch:
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- U.S. employers probably eliminated 110,000 net jobs in September, the steepest loss since early 2003, economists said as the market looked ahead to the government's nonfarm payroll report due Friday morning.
Such a decline would represent the nation's ninth consecutive month of job losses, totaling more than 600,000.
From Reuters:
BOSTON/CHICAGO (Reuters) - Shares of top U.S. manufacturers including 3M Co (NYSE:MMM - News), Honeywell International Inc (NYSE:HON - News) and Textron Inc (NYSE:TXT - News) tumbled on Thursday after a stock analyst downgraded the industrial sector, saying the credit crunch could mean a prolonged period of slow growth.
I think its reasonable to oppose the bill the House will consider because it is a badly designed solution to the problem. But it does seem like we are almost out of time to do something to unfreeze credit markets.
Krugman has been way ahead of this whole mess and correct in his warnings about what might happen -- for years now. His take on the measure:
For the fact is that the plan on offer is a stinker — and inexcusably so. The financial system has been under severe stress for more than a year, and there should have been carefully thought-out contingency plans ready to roll out in case the markets melted down. Obviously, there weren’t: the Paulson plan was clearly drawn up in haste and confusion. And Treasury officials have yet to offer any clear explanation of how the plan is supposed to work, probably because they themselves have no idea what they’re doing.
Despite this, as I said, I hope the plan passes, because otherwise we’ll probably see even worse panic in the markets. But at best, the plan will buy some time to seek a real solution to the crisis.
This crisis is exemplary of what happens when voters repeatedly elect bad governments.
On some level, I would like all those people who voted for W and all those corrupt GOP Congressmen and Senators to have to live in a world fully consistent with the principles -- or lack of principles -- of the people they voted for.
Unfortunately, we -- and our kids -- have to live in the same world, so it would only really be possible to see them get their just desserts by stabbing ourselves in the eye.
I've seen a lot of FDR nostalgia lately, but there is nothing romantic about big economic downturns.
I hope the House passes this bill.
But even more so, I hope we do a lot better job in the next 30 days connecting the dots for outraged voters on how the economic crisis was a direct consequence of Republican policies and Republican governing practices (like Republican majorities glomming Phil Gramm's Commodity Futures Modernization Act - a bill that had never passed either House of Congress, and never even made it to a floor debate - on to a massive appropriation bill in a the middle of the night in a House-Senate conference committee in late December, 2000, a few days after the White House was stolen from Al Gore).
Right-wing Senators are probably the people most directly responsible for the deregulation that fueled this mess, but even as Obama has surged, Democratic Senate candidates have been stuck in many races behind the very kleptocratic nematodes who put us here.
Everyone knew ahead of time last night that the VP debate didn't matter. Bentsen utterly vivisected the hapless Dan Quayle in 1988 (waved his liver around on a stick for all to see), and it didn't matter a whit.
But the vote expected today could well have a significant impact on the broader economy, and will play a big role in setting the terms of debate between now and November.