In effect Pelosi said "Passing this bill will be an admission that the Republicans screwed up, which will make great election fodder."

She just couldn't resist, I guess.

"A senior aide to Pelosi rejected the Republican claims against the speaker, saying the suggestion that her speech motivated House Republicans to vote against the bailout plan was “absurd.”

“You don’t vote on the speech, you vote on the bill,” said the aide."

So the republicans say their feelings got hurt and now they're going to pout about it? Silly and immature as Pelosi was being, the republicans could have shown they had real balls or weren't a bunch of sissy girls who get into a tizzy when someone makes some accusations.

“Democrats believe in the free market, which can and does create jobs, wealth, and capital, but left to its own devices it has created chaos.

Ah, but it hasn't been left to its own devices, was it: see Freddie Mac & Fanny Mae.

Also, don't the Dems control Congress. I thought I read that 95 of them voted against the bill.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

Shocking video unearthed Democrats in their own words covering up the Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac Scam that caused economic crisis.

From a CNN article:

"The bill failed by a vote of 205 to 228, with 140 Democrats and 65 Republicans voting in favor and 95 Democrats joining 133 Republicans against."

thank you for the link...when I saw Pelosi get up and do her partisan thang today I almost lost it. Ungracious, opportunistic, spiteful, malicious and also stupid. Really stupid. She is a stupid and spiteful woman incapable of leading beyond partisan hate. She needs to step down. She needs to be replaced. Horrific. Disgusting.

Has the world ended yet? When it does I guess that's because ALL THE FAT CATS didn't get bailed out.

Not just the fat cats, Bob. And not just the people invested in the market either - this thing has tentacles all over the place.

I have no idea if this bill is good or bad, but I am leery given that the same boneheads who caused the problem are now providing the solution.

TheAnchroess would have us believe that Sarah Palin with a hockey stick will save the day? That Sarah Palin with her International experience that consists of looking out her window across the water to the Russian state will save the day?
John McCain and his continuing lies will save the day?

Suck it up princess..people vent their frustrations but you don't vote against a proposal that could have saved Billions lost in the stock market. Take a look at your mutual funds. The Republicans are reasonable for every single drop in your portfolio. I'm sure you did your research on John McCains campaign manager and his history at Fannie Mae. Talk about a cracks in corruption in the Republican camp.

"So the republicans say their feelings got hurt and now they're going to pout about it? Silly and immature as Pelosi was being, the republicans could have show"

The dumocrats have a majority so WHY didn't they pass it themselves? Because they don't have any guts, that why. If the bill was so good they should pass it and take all the credit=unless they aren't confident there will be any credit to take.

Its all politics. Apparently, most of those voting against the bill are up for re-election this fall and MOST Americans are against this bill.

The more I follow it the more the dumocrats are like the Canadian leiberals.

Despicable liars, the whole lot of them.

Fortunately Harper has the leiberals on the run and I hope he is able to achieve his goal which is to wipe out the lieberals in Canada.

arrrghh.. was typing to fast. Reasonable is an oxymoron for the Republicans. I meant the word "Responsible"

Horny Toad. you're right about the Liberals but way off on the Democrats.
Did you see the Debate, did you see the interview of Katie Couric and (I believe that Dinosaurs and people played together 6000 years ago) Sarah Palin.
She is perhaps the flakiest political canadiate the world has ever seen and the most dangerous VP pick ever.
We've seen the Liberals in Canada shift significantly to the LEFT. With a Palin/McCain opps... McCain/Palin ticket in the White house; look for an unbelievable move to the RIGHT. Slap those chastity belts on your children.

I am leery given that the same boneheads who caused the problem are now providing the solution.

Good. You should be.

Fighting for democracy:

I'm shocked to hear that McCain's campaign manager may have some connection to Fanny Mae!! Thank God the Obama team does not have anything to do with .... oh wait a minute ... never mind.
...

When fighting for democracy, never let facts get in the way of a good opinion.

The Anchoress (and most other people) think that something needs to be done. I disagree. I think that something needs to happen. We need to experience a depression similar to the one that molded the greatest generation. Borrowing $700 billion (and it will be borrowed) to fix a problem caused by reckless borrowing simply illustrates how delusional we've become. That cartoon the Captain posted the other day applies to many other addictions of ours, not just an addiction to oil.

Pelosi always tried to portray herself as a responsible adult brought to Washington to make sure the boys and girls play nice in the sandbox. Her behaviour was just atrocious.

This bill needs to pass, although I really hate to say it.

And it will pass - following what I think will be a meltdown of the market tomorrow. I predict the Dow will go less than 10K, maybe even shut down for a bit.

But, I'm often wrong - will be interesting to see!

FannIE FannIE. Where's the spellcheck when you need it.

"Hi, I'm from the government and I'm here to help"

I second your skepticism Ron.

"The Republicans are reasonable for every single drop in your portfolio. I'm sure you did your research on John McCains campaign manager and his history at Fannie Mae. Talk about a cracks in corruption in the Republican camp."

Hate to crush your arguments with facts, but this problem started with Carter and then exacerbated by Clinton forcing the banks, through Fannie and Freddie to take mortgages from people who couldn't afford them. A classical case of the left wing trying to re-distribute wealth which always fails. A number of times during the Bush administration there were attempts to rein in Freddie and Fannie but the dumocrats always thwarted any effort to reguate them.

As a lefty you won't listen to reason anyway but I suspect you will agree with the fact that this problem arose through Freddie and Fannie. Given that, go to this video ( http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs)where you can see with your own eyes, dumocrats speaking against the auditor who tried to blow the whistle on Freddie and Fannie.

This is a problem created by dumocrats, aided and abeted by dumocrats and now they want the Republicans to share the criticism.

Horny Toad

Just what does Sarah Palin have to do with the bail-out. Oh, right, its fashionable for lefties to smear Palin. And, if you don't have a valid argument they how about an ad hominem attack.

Yes, I saw the debate. A tie, I thought. But it did prove that Obama is a liar-at least according to Kissinger.
No, I didn't see Palin on Couric. I heard it wasn't too good. So what. Biden just said that Rosevelt was the pres in 1929 and calmed the stock market by going on television. Only problem was the Hoover was the pres and there was NO TELEVISION in 1929. But thats OK because he is a leftie. I also saw her in the Hannity interview which I thought was very good. She is inexperienced in foreigh affairs but then again she is NOT running for President .Obama is and he has just as much foreign affairs experience, which is ZERO. But that seems to be OK to the koolaid drinkers.I also heard Palin say that her faith was very important to her but that she wasn't going to "cram it down anyones throat".
What you and the progressives don't like about her is that she has convictions and lives by them. Kind of opposite to liberals, who, if they even have any convictions, are comfortable in discarding them for politican advantage.

Horny Toad

FightingForDemocracy wrote: "Suck it up princess..people vent their frustrations but you don't vote against a proposal that could have saved Billions lost in the stock market."

Dear Fighting: From a macro viewpoint, real wealth is never lost in the market. However, paper wealth, defined as the share-price last paid for an asset multiplied by the number of outstanding shares, is often lost. Soaking the taxpayer (or, more likely, borrowing) $700 billion to shore up paper wealth is to run a fool's errand. At best it delays an ultimate collapse.

There is something that might be overlooked by Canadian readers.

The House of Representatives is now the single bastion of conservatism in the US government.

Conservatism does not exist in the executive branch, nor in the Senate. True, there are many Republicans, but conservatism is now almost exclusively confined to the US Congress.

The reason the Republican Congress is being recalcitrant about accepting a new bill beyond Pelosi's successful effort to derail it is that the House of Representatives has been hearing from furious constituents.

People who vote conservatives into the House do not want to see the US making further steps into socialism. The conservative House wants free-market initiatives to be the vehicle for bailout, along with regulation and penalties.

Only last month in the midst of the surging gas prices, Congressional Republicans occupied the House chambers during recess and stayed a month, speaking diatribes against Pelosi and Democrats' reluctance to allow new drilling for oil.

At the beginning of that struggle, Pelosi had the lights in the House chamber turned off. She had the cameras jerked out. She had the microphone at the podium turned off.

The same Republicans you see today actually were using their personal cell phone cameras to get the message out to the American people that Pelosi was engaging in draconian tactics to silence them. They were using cell phones to try to broadcast the message that the voice of the American people had been censored, and citizens didn't know what was happening in our own House chambers.

So it is true that Pelosi intentionally scuttled the bill to make political points. And the market has plunged over 700 points. But the citizens and Republican Congressional representatives are prepared to sacrifice financial well-being in order to struggle against oppressive socialists in the House who would change the character of America's economic system.

God bless the conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives.

Pelosi doesn't seem to want to share the criticism. While there is more than enough blame to share, she blames it all on the Bush administration. The video (already pointed out twice on this thread) speaks volumes. The whole fiasco is a farce.

Horny, they don't want the Republicans to share the criticism. Nancy is clearly placing all blame on the republicans. She's blaming it all on the Republicans: "It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush administration’s failed economic policies — policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything-goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system"

"The House of Representatives is now the single bastion of conservatism in the US government."

Don't the dumocrats have a majority in the house?

Horny Toad

Horny Toad,
good question.

Ironically enough, the Democrats do in fact have a majority in the House of Representatives. That is why Pelosi could engage in nefarious tricks to try to suppress Republican voices.

The disturbing truth is that the Democrats could easily pass this bill on their own without any help from Republicans. They have the votes.

But they are too craven to do so, because they want Republicans to sign on in order to give them cover under the label of "bipartisanship".

In this way when the citizens of the United States begin to be critical of them, Democrats could hide behind the notion that this was a joint initiative of Republicans and Democrats.

So here is what conservatives in the House (a minority) said to them.

"If you want to vote this damn thing in, do it yourself."

Conservatives refused to go along. This has given conservatives some leverage in the face of the fact that we do not have a majority. They want to steamroll us into signing off on something that flies in the face of our ideological principles.

So here you can see the level of venal desire on the part of Democrats. They could go ahead and pass this thing if they wanted to badly enough. But they are too cowardly to do so unless they can find a way for Republicans to share the blame.

Right now we're telling them to stick it.

House Republicans: "We're going to let the economy tank 'cause that woman said mean stuff about us!"

McCain Republicans: "We can't let Palin talk to the press 'cause you might say mean stuff about her!"

Crybabies, cowards and wimps!

No wonder they can't win a war or catch Bin Laden!

Guess they're afraid he might say a mean word to them and hurt their feelings!

Haw! Haw!

Invest with the Banks that received the mortgage money and not the banks that gave the mortgages and hold the bad collateral. It may be a good time to invest in the market while it is down before they announce a new bail out plan and it goes up again. It is good to be in the know.

"... if we should not hit the brakes before we go over a cliff, because we couldn’t clearly see the bend in the road."

Holy mixed metaphor Batman ....which is it? Cliff? Bend?

Perhaps a fork in the road?

High road: All Americans gainfully employed, earning a decent wage, taking pride in accomplishing something that is significant, useful and valuable, for themselves and their communities rather than consuming, consuming, consuming cheap goods manufactured off-shore.

Low road: More Wall Street and Washington DC white collar crime, greed, greed, greed.

Let the GUILTY pay.

Leave the taxpayers alone.

Funny how that aspect never came up in Pelosi's verbiage.

test

Pelosi and Read are asshats of the first order.... anything that they touch is tainted like a Maple Leaf baloney.

DBO:
Greed is not confined to Wall Street. People who falsify their qualifications for a mortgage are greedy. People who load up on credit-card debt because they are unable to postpone gratification are greedy. People who vote for politicians promising entitlements to be paid for by "the rich" are greedy. Your romantic view of the common man is naive.

Isn't there some guy named obama that's really, really smart and can fix everything? Anybody seen him? I heard on a Sunday talk show that he's on the phone, like, a lot, talking to Paulson, so maybe that explains where he is and what he's doing - hiding, and hoping he comes out ahead somehow without taking responsibility.

I, for one, would very much like to see one of Kate's "Seven Year Recession Watch" posts.

They were so cute...

Who's RSS feeder went off at 7:50 PM?

Sheesh.

The vote was a set up, and the House GOPer's knew it before the vote.

The liquidity trap is actually a really big problem and I don't think anybody's going to pay attention until a really big European institution turns turtle. One might be Belgian the other might be German. The latter is only worth 80% of the German economy, The Belgian one is 2 TIMES the size of its home economy.

Do YOU think the ECB is up for this game?

We are about to find out...

How sleazy can the press and democrats be? The rats have a congressional majority and they try and blame 12 republicans when 30% of democrats didn’t vote for the bill.

Kaplan wrote:
"I, for one, would very much like to see one of Kate's "Seven Year Recession Watch" posts.

They were so cute..."

7 years predicting a recession, and then when it comes (as it always does ... eventually), they say "told you so".

Kaplan, if you have a dictionary under all those comic books, perhaps you should look up the word "irony". Then look up the word "unintentional". Then look up the word "shouldn't open his mouth in public because he just embarrasses himself".

Did not want to believe that this would happen, happened anyway.
‘Harry Reid can take the time to try to sneak a ban on oil shale mining into new legislation’.
Reid is like snake in the grass, speaking from both sides of his mouth, though it is not clear if one side knows what the other is speaking off.
Reid is the leader of anything by simple default. Nobody wanted to do it. Reid seem not to mind the 'sheet' coming at him from everywhere, so as long as there is money in it for him to extract he is ok.

The other leader they have in congress is so fluffy, it is like the lightness of a butterfly. If a few around her did not support the nonsense the leader comes up with, the speaker would ever so lightly crash to the floor of that house and likely seriously injure herself.
The dear leader looks like her mind is permanently in wonderland, probably can’t believe her luck, at the position that she acquired which she did by default. Nobody wanted it.

‘Barack Obama took full credit for the “bailout” plan he now says he is giving only “cautious support.”’
It is becoming increasingly clear that Obama has no position on anything, much like the Liberals. Obamas aim is to be the president of the US. Why, is not really clear or that important.

Karl, when the next set of numbers come out, and they don't show a recession, you'll be the one eating your words. The stock market losses are a blip in the long term growth of the market. And I wouldn't be surprised if all the people erasing their mortgage debts and sticking the banks with temporarily deflated housing prices are probably still spending all of their disposable income. Ultimately a bunch of high priced fools will be out of their huge bonuses. We'll see what else happens.

It's incredible how nobody, read NOBODY, will accept responsibility for this mess. It's always someone else's fault.

Anybody with half a brain could have seen this coming years if not decades ago. It started when the US economy moved from an industrial economy to a get-rich-quick gimmick economy.

This crisis is a result of our own greed and moral bankruptcy. Saying 'the State forced the banks to lend to insolvent minorities' or other similar blame games don't cut it. We wanted the party to go on and any scheme, however shady, was good to keep it going.

Trying to alleviate this putrid mess with nearly a trillion$ of taxpayers' (read: taxpayers children) money was a despicable, cowardly solution that would only delay the inevitable. At least more than half of the US Congress has shown some backbone. About time.

The party's over. We're in for one hell of a hangover.

Don't be surprised if the stock exchanges shut down some time tomorrow.

And to all of you who saw this coming and got all your assets in cash, land and precious metals: give yourselves a big pat on the back.

There is a full court press on right now in the media to get this package passed.....yet there are other voices that are sayig do something, just not this. Tomorrow is going to be one fuhgly day on the markets.

This was a preventable thing...and the worst consequences are still preventable....

I will say the House GOP are horrendous at explaining what they want thats different. If what they are looking for is a chnage to loan guarantees from asset purchase there is language that can cover that pretty fast.

Japan is already off a few hundred points, Australia is off a couple per cent already.

Hmmm which company needs to borrow lots of dollars to keep their operations running on a day to day basis? Just wait till the calls come in saying layoffs start tomorrow.

A freaking mess, Bush isnt much use right now, nobody believes him and he isnt trying to hard from what I can tell. Something else is up.

By the way, check out this from instapundit

A READER AT A MAJOR NEWSROOM EMAILS: "Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working." I asked permission to reprint without attribution and it was granted.

Something definitely up.

Pete:

Which words will I be eating? Hmmm .... perhaps the ones where I said THAT RECESSIONS ALWAYS EVENTUALLY COME? I am not debating that this might just be (probably is) a recessions. My point is that when you predict that a recession is just around the corner for the better part of a decade, it tends to take a little zip out of your "I told you so" when the recession does come.

Recessions come and go. Booms come and go. A simple look at history will tell you that. In order to impress me with prophetic prediction about a recession they are going to have to do better than 7 years.

Eat my words? Perhaps you had better take another crack at actually reading my words.

Pete,

Well, this is embarrassing. After my rant I went and reread your words. And now I have to eat the words of my last comment. Hoisted on my own petard I guess. (There is no emoticon sufficient to convey my embarrassment)

Anyway, I hope you are right, and this is just a blip. And I hope some sanity begins to prevail in the lending habits south of the border.

Stephen-

This is what's "up". The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" and it is fully delineated here: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html

Enjoy. They've been waiting a long time for their chance and now they have it. Permanent power at all costs.

Now where have I heard that before...

(Does anyone else think that when Obama juts his chin out for the "pose", he looks just like Benito Mussolini? Just askin'....)

I'm with the Anchoress on this, I do not believe it is all that serious, because they ( both Dems and Reps) are not acting as if this is an emergency.

And obviously they know somethings we don't.

If the USA was about to crumble to pieces, they would move their butts much faster.

They do not seem to be in a hurry at all.

Today seemed like a regular day for them.

Of course the main stream media is treating this as if the end of the world was next week, but then they do it with everything from the Nile Virus, SARS, Y2K to Global warming.

Yes unfortunately some people will lose money and will lose jobs, I am not denying that.

but most likely In a year no one will be talking about this anymore and the USA will be just fine.

Take a look at these predictions from so-called " experts" on Y2K,

"We are heading for a disaster greater than anything the world has experienced since the bubonic plague of the mid-14th century."
---Gary North, "Blind Man's Bluff in the Year 2000"

[Y2K will] be known as the greatest social, political, and financial crisis mankind has faced since the great plagues of the 14th century that wiped out one-third of Europe."
---Bruce Tippery, Gary North's publisher

"If we don't have electricity, nothing else works. On New Year's Eve 1999, let me suggest three places you don't want to be: in an elevator, in an airplane, or in a hospital."
---Sen. Christopher Dodd, (D-Conn.), 06/12/98

"Americans cannot escape the inevitable risks of Y2K. Like characters in The Decameron fleeing a medieval plague, they can run to the hills if they want, as some doomsayers are doing, but the bug eventually will catch them, frustrate their best-laid plans and cost them dearly for years to come."
---Duncan A. MacDonald, IntellectualCapital.COM, 12/03/98
Duncan A. MacDonald is a retired general counsel for Citibank's card programs for Europe and North America. He is currently advising banks on Y2K, alternate dispute resolution, antitrust law, privacy policy and plain language.

"Severe long- and short-term disruptions to supply chains are likely to occur [due to Y2K-related system failures]. ... The Y2K problem still has the potential to be very disruptive, necessitating continued, intensive preparation in the time remaining,"
---U.S. Senate Committe on the Year 2000 Technology Problem, 09/22/99

"Problems will start to bubble up and by the second quarter [of 2000], there will be a big mess."
---Lynn Edelson, principal at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP's operational and systems risk management group in Los Angeles, 08/02/99, quoted in Techweb.com

... ... ... ... ... ...

All "experts" and ALL WRONG on Y2K.

This financial meltdown is not the end of the world as we know it, far from it.

In a year we will barely remember it ever happened just like Y2K and the USA will be thriving.

Playing political games even in times of crisis.Damned fools.

Or, when in doubt, look at the data.

Especially when that data has been updated just this morning. Very eye opening.

Here's the blog post with the data in question: http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-banking-data-wheres-credit-crisis.html

Embedded at the top of that post is a link to The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. That link is to the Sept. 29, 2008 updated loan demand, as reported and compiled by that branch. All the charts are showing new highs of loan demand and origination.

This whole imbroglio is getting me mad and it is beginning to look engineered.

I'm going to step back, sleep on the data, and tackle this again in the morning. I need to think, because somebody is lying.

Kate you is my new HERO. I never was none no good at that cypherin' business but I done used all my fingers and toes and figured this out. Democrats have 37 more seats than the republican'ts. So even if the two parties had equal representation that is........... take away 37 yes votes from Democrats to even it out and they still voted as a party a majority YES by 8 votes. Now just for fun add them there 37 yes votes to the republican'ts total. Hmmmm. SEEMS that they still woulda done voted it down over there at the GOP side of the NON-PARTISAN congress by a vote of 133 to 102. So it still woulda been voted down by them there NON-PARTISAN GOP party fellas by 31 votes. Yep I am convinced now it is Nancy Pelosi's fault. Sure feel sorry for McCan't after all the hard work he put into this thing puttin' it all together and such ya know! Well gotta go now. Got's me a romantic date with my republican't cousin.

"Saying 'the State forced the banks to lend to insolvent minorities' or other similar blame games don't cut it. "

The problem with this statement is that it simply isn't true. Its now quite well documented(including videos on u-tube) that this whole mess started under Carter, continued under Clinton and due to intense interference by the dumocrats, committees were unable to stop it.

In Canada we have a simliar movement trying to get housing for the homeless. Next they will want the government to loan mortgage money so these lazy sots( most of them) can own their own home-even if they can't possibly pay for it.

Whoda thunk that the USA is really becoming a lot more socialist than Canada.

Thank god for Harper.

Horny Toad

Newt Gingrich has some interesting things to say about the role of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and the "mark to market" or “fair value” accounting rules in the current financial market meltdown.

"It is true that the root of this crisis is bad mortgage loans, but probably 70% of the real crisis that we face today is caused by mark-to-market accounting in an illiquid market."

http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/09/29/mark-to-market-oped-cx_ng_0929gingrich.html

"The problem with this statement is that it simply isn't true. Its now quite well documented(including videos on u-tube) that this whole mess started under Carter, continued under Clinton and due to intense interference by the dumocrats, committees were unable to stop it."

And it could have been stopped anytime during the administrations of Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. They didn't because for all that time everyone profited from it.

And yet the sub-prime mess is just part of the problem, the exposure to the derivative casino is a much more serious problem. They let Wall Street be turned into an East Coast Las Vegas. Much of the derivative 'wealth' is just thin air and will eventually be liquidated.

In any event, like others said above, this is not the end of the world. Economic collapses are a commonplace occurence worldwide, people may lose most of their assets, but they live on to rebuild. Just look at the Asia meltdown in 1997, Russia in the 90s, and Argentina in 2002. Those places are doing just fine a few years later.

Re: GreenNeck at 12:35 AM
Although the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was on the books since 1977, it had no teeth and was largely unenforced. One of Bill Clinton's first acts on becoming President in 1993 was to order new regulations for the CRA. Thus, Reagan and Bush I can be exonerated. Bush II did reverse some of Clinton's CRA initiativies in 2005, but was opposed by the Democrats.

See here for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act.

These aspects of Clinton's changes are truly frightening: "Using federal home-loan data broken down by neighborhood, income group, and race; encouraging community groups to complain when banks were not loaning enough to specified neighborhood, income group, and race; allowing community groups that marketed loans to targeted groups to collect a fee from the banks". One of the organizations benefiting significantly as a "community group" was the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a radical left group with whom Barack Obama has a long if not distinguished relationship.

I agree with Toadie, this problem was a long time coming and more than a few politicians have dirty hands. To continue with the often refered to situalion as a "crap sandwich", when the sandwich hit the fan more than a few were covered.

Of course we all know it is George Bush's fault even if he warned of this several times. The Dem's Barney Frank spent quite a lot of time extoling the virtues and stability of Freddie & Fannie. Hank Paulson already got his golden parachute from Goldman Sachs so it doesn't hurt him. Alan Greenspan has made several faux pas during his tenure and quite rightly might have contributed to the housing bubble with the Adjustable Rate Morgages. His consulting for a hedge fund company after leaving treasury also seems to have made him weathier.

The point I'm getting at is that there are a lot of players from both teams involved with this mess and the desire to play partisan politics rather than agree to anything is not helping.

Karl, I need to apologize to you, I thought you were mocking Kate's 7-year recession watch posts, but you were actually quoting Kaplan, who was the fool doing the mocking. By the looks of the market reaction, the fallout seems to be about as bad as the whole dot-com bubble bust. In the end, I don't think it's going to be nearly as bad as all the doomsayers are predicting. There's some great real estate deals to be had, the banking industry has learned a valuable lesson, the price of oil is down again, and the US dollar got stronger.

rsp: You might try to respond to the points I made instead of a knee-jerk reaction.

I believe in personal responsibility and liability. I also support what you label as a "romantic and naive view"; gainful employment and decent jobs for everyone. That is the working ethic that informed my parents' lives, and still resonates for me and my children.

The banks and credit card companies got us all in this mess by flogging credit as though it were a commodity.

What's your alternative rsp? Slave labour camps in penitentiaries run by private corporations?

The banks and credit card companies got us all in this mess by flogging credit as though it were a commodity

deBO, with respect: Credit *is* a commodity. Ask instead who told (not asked) them how it was to be flogged 8 years ago.

DBO:
You write "The banks and credit card companies got us all in this mess by flogging credit as though it were a commodity. "

That statement illustrates precisely how you romanticize the common man. Nobody forces us to load up on credit. You talk as though we are all just the helpless little playthings of sinister capitalists. That is the language that demagogues use when they flatter us by blaming our errors on someone else. Since, by your own testimony, you are the child of sensible parents, I'm astonished that you buy into it.

As to the closing line of your post, it is the sort of non sequitur that usually betrays a lack of confidence in one's own position.