Bailing Out of the Bail Out

As we've all heard by now, the bail out package failed to pass the House of Representatives.

This, alone, may not be a bad thing. I have begun to have serious doubts about the bill and its size. (Note, I am not an economist, I have taken exactly one basic economics course over 20 years ago, so this is all based on what I'm reading, not based on any expertise!)

The truth is that economists do not seem to agree on this bill. This isn't surprising, it seems like if you get N economists in a room, you end up with at least N+1 opinions on any situation.

Nevertheless, there are some who seem pretty convinced that:

1. This package won't work particularly well.
2. With the high price tag, this package will further damage the economy.
3. There are cheaper things we could do that might have a better chance of working.

I don't know if any of this is true, but it seems like an awfully big gamble of a lot of money, a lot of additional national debt and a lot of weakening of the dollar on a gamble.

However, I'm getting really annoyed at the partisanship. The vote was called when Nancy Pelosi said she could deliver a certain number of democrats, and John Boehner said he could deliver a certain amount of republicans. Those two numbers together added up to enough to pass the bill, but after the votes were cast, the democrats came through, the republicans did not.

Rep. Boehner immediately pointed the finger of blame at Nancy Pelosi for a supposed partisan speech she gave before the vote. Even assuming that's true, it does not make me feel any better about the republicans that they would base their vote on what some have said the most important financial legislation in our lifetimes on hurt feelings, and if they did, it says a lot (all bad) about their willingness to throw the country and its economy under the bus.

Far more likely, of course, is that Boehner needs an excuse why he can't even control the people he's supposed to lead, because it doesn't look good for a party's leadership in the Congress to be that weak.

Also, Senator Obama has been very quiet on the whole matter, enough so that John McCain has accused him of doing nothing, showing no leadership in the whole matter. But the truth is that what that really means is that Obama isn't playing politics with it.

Today, just a bit after 5pm, McCain held a press conference in which two of his statements, back to back, were to talk about how shameful it was that "Senator Obama and his allies in Congress" had injected "unnecessary partisanship into the process", followed by "Now is not the time to affix blame, it's time to fix the problem."

Essentially "It's all Obama's fault. But it's not time to assign fault."

The entire handling of this affair has smacked of raw partisan politics on the McCain side, and it's making me sick.

Liam.