I just saw a really interesting post by Ezra Klein in which he posts in full a speech by Obama on the bailout:
http://www.prospect.org/...
Klein raises an interesting point in the following paragraph:
The argument running through these remarks is that Congress has to act now so Obama can act later. If a bailout is passed, and disaster is averted, there will be time to modify the rules, recoup the investment, and construct the modern regulatory structure that's proving so necessary. If it is not passed, and the markets do seize up, then Obama will be stuck managing a crisis rather than reforming a sector, and that's a rather less appealing option.
So this makes me wonder if the Republicans are deliberately sabotaging the bailout in part to sabotage Obama's presidency and limit his options.
Possibly this gives them too much credit; we on the left are prone to engage in "threat inflation" when it comes to the Republicans and their sinister, can't-possibly-fail-to-screw-us machinations - much as an earlier generation of Americans engaged in threat inflation against the Soviets.
What do you think?