News came out this morning that one of the major reasons why the Bailout Bill failed was because House Republicans refused to vote in favor of it due to caustic partisan remarks made by Speaker of the House (and Democrat) Nancy Pelosi, just before the vote. Millions of married men everywhere, when hearing about this, silently laughed and shook their heads -- because we KNOW the feeling: women must always have the last word, good or bad. You picked a helluva time to mouth off, Madame Speaker.
Sure, there's good to come of this -- the bill needs to be given more time for review (after all, it's only 700 BILLION dollars we're talking about here), but it also brings to light several very interesting tidbits:
1) We still don't exactly know what makes up the $700 billion figure. We got this number from a 3-page bill suggestion from the Bush Administration via the Secretary of the Treasury. An administration (and possibly Secretary) that will be out of office in 4 short months, yet the funding is to carry over 8-10 years minimum.
2) This means that all the House members were to vote "yea" on the largest funding package ever, yet have no specific idea how it's to be allocated. It's no wonder that most of the House was skeptical at best, especially only 7 weeks from election day. Many were concerned that a "yea" vote would sink their campaigns, so naturally they took the high road.
3) Neither Obama nor McCain was able to make a difference in the voting. Obama had a meeting with the Black Caucus on Sunday -- the same group that voted "no" on the bill. I guess he didn't have enough time to discuss and persuade the caucus to vote the same "yea" way he would vote, and this certainly can't bode well for him -- one could turn this around and say the same things the Dems are saying about Palin: if Obama can't sell the Black Caucus, how can we expect him to sell Putin? Meanwhile, McCain was unable to convince enough House Republicans to vote the same "yea" way he would vote, either. In fact, most of the House Reps from McCain's home state of Arizona voted "no" on the bill. Again, where is the effective leadership?
4) No help from a weak POTUS and a weaker SotH. Reagan didn't have these issues when he wanted important legislation passed, and do you think Tip O'Neil would have let this happen the way it did? No way. Both Bush and Pelosi suffer from the lowest approval ratings in history, so they have no mandate to help them influence the fence-straddlers.
5) Nancy's piehole. What in the world was she thinking? That didn't help your reputation to the American people, Nance. Ever hear of "discretion is the better part of valor"? Next time, use some decorum and work harder to set the example. We expect better from you.
Finally, I'm still wondering what exactly constitutes $700 Billion and what it specifically relates to in the accounting. Why can we not get more information on this? It is because of all this grey area in the numbers that I'm not concerned about the market suffering yesterday. And further proof can be found in today's market activity: up over 450 points, the very next day, so you know the 777 point drop was artificial -- of course it is! It's all speculation anyway!
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