Sep 29 2008
Obama Claimed Bailout Was His Success, Will It Be His Failure?
MAJOR UPDATE: OK, There are dangers to speed posting from work.  Clearly the GOP had more Nay votes – my bad!  More dems voted against the bill (95) than Republicans (65)! Way to go Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Frank, nice ‘leadership’ there. – end update.
Yesterday Obama claimed he was the driving force behind the bailout package being voted today:
“Here are the facts: For two weeks I was on the phone every day with (Treasury) Secretary (Henry) Paulson and the congressional leaders making sure that the principles that have been ultimately adopted were incorporated in the bill,” Obama said in an interview on “Face the Nation” on CBS.
He claimed that he was responsible for many of the provisions now in the Bill. So, will he also be taking responsibility if the whole thing tanks?
The Dow industrials have fallen more than 700 on fears bailout package vote will fail.Wall Street fears the government’s plan to buy up toxic debt wouldn’t be sufficient to resuscitate nearly frozen credit markets.
Obama ran to take credit for events he tried mightily to stay away from. Now he and the Democrat led Congress can take credit for their handy work – so far the bill is failing to pass.
Update: The Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Frank-Bush-Paulson plan fails to muster support.
Update: Here is a link to Obama taking credit for this Democrat led abortion. Â H/T to The Anchoress, who has a great post up on how this so called ‘crisis’ reeks of business as usual (remind me again how ACORN needed a government handout in order to save the nation???).
Have they killed the Community Reinvestment Act yet?
.
These critters just don’t get it. Perhaps when American Express can’t pay retailers because they can not roll over their short term commercial paper and thus cause these businesses to not be able to meet payroll and when the decline in tax revenues takes hold and they can’t find pork then they may get it.
This is not a bailout but a purchase of long term assets that have already been written down and just can not be held by the respective institutions due to the drag on capital requirements.
Once again short term thinking in a long term world. Just keep pointing fingers Congress but remember 4 are pointing back at you!!!!
depends on which way benefits him.
the number of Noes from the Dems were enough to sink it. If all dems had voted aye, it would have passed. so they can have all the credit for sinking it.
OregonGuy.
DOA.
KauaiBoy,
Someone in the last week rightfully noted that when the Feds took over Freddia Mac and Fannie Mae they basically DID buy out all the long term risky mortgages.
At least that is what some could argue.
NOW I’m worried.
Because Obama and his propaganda press lackeys will spin this as the Republicans fault.
McCain needs to get the economic issues locked down. Otherwise, Obama wins.
Remember, the Dems have painted themselves into a box. Everything bad for the country is good for them – and what is good for America is bad for the Democrats. I would not put it past them to have quietly passed the word to kill the bill, slag the economy, and ride the disaster to victory.
It is going to be played as Republicans failure. This is how every report is playing it. But actually, it doesn’t really matter anymore who takes the blame or casts the blame. Our time is up.
This is not just an American crash – this is a worldwide crash. People may not have noticed, but 2 large European banks failed over this weekend, and Wachovia failed here this morning. (I know, the Fed cleverly didn’t use the word “failure” they called it a “forced sale.” Doesn’t that make you feel better?
It used to be crazy to talk about another 1929. But this is worse. We will fall much harder and much faster.
At this moment, every corporation in America is shifting deposits to the three banks that are now government surrogates, and “too big to fail”: JP Morgan – Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America. That means that every smaller bank in the country is experiencing a high-tech bank run at this very instant. Which means that the banking system is teetering on the edge of total collapse.
We could see 1,000 bank failures within the next two weeks, and the complete collapse of our modern economy within two more. By collapse I mean credit cards no longer valid (none of them as that system collapses) checks no longer accepted, and cash very difficult to find.
It may be a very good time to start stocking your closets with canned goods. Ammunition, too.
Note the update, more dems voted nay (95) than GOP (65). Can’t spin that as a GOP failure!
correction: 65 GOP votes were FOR (yea) with 95 AGAINST (nay) for Dems, which are a very interesting mix of far-left like Kucinich and Blumenaur and conservative Blue Dog Dems like Childerrs and Herseth-Sandlin.
Still, Dems should NOT be blaming GOP votes, when they had so many Dems voting NO.
If only someone would post the speech that Pelosi made just before the vote. AP reports it’s the same old attack on ‘failure of Bush economic ideology’, which, if true, was totally inappropriate.
People inside MSM and outside really need to stop inciting panic.
Birdalone is right.
FOR: 140D, 65R
AGAINST: 95D, 133R
Basically, this was a bipartisan defeat. The problem is, the Dems and their press lackeys are already spinning it as a Republican-caused catastrophe.
“People inside MSM and outside really need to stop inciting panic.”
You’re right, no need to panic – but…
Anyone who has a pension is about to lose it. But don’t panic. Oh, you didn’t know that the PBGC (pension benefit guarantee corp) is woefully underfunded and can’t handle a single major corporate collapse?
And anyone who has a life insurance policy is about to lose it. But don’t panic. Or didn’t you know that most life insurance companies assets were invested in stocks (now collapsing) and in the derivative assets that have gone bust?
And there is an electronic run starting on the banking system this instant that will collapse most of the regional banks within a few days. But don’t panic.
And big-ticket sales – houses, cars, anything that requires credit – are grinding to a halt as credit freezes up for everyone – but don’t panic. So what if all the companies selling those things go bankrupt?
No, no, everything’s just fine. It’ll all blow over. Sure it will.
If they would add in the part about changing the Mark to Market aspect and making insurance more prominent, maybe it would pass.
And Newt will have to come out in favor of it.
This has been a setup from the getgo. Nancy made that crap speech right before the vote in order to make this fail…so the dems can blame republicans for our financial misery.
Remember this whole thing is orchestrated.
Here’s the problem with the mark-to-market accounting change: maybe a year ago, that could have worked. But it’s too late for that to have any effect now, in fact that would now make the confidence level drop even further (if possible) and make things even worse.
Here’s why: mark-to-market is an accounting rule which says that a bank or other financial company must value assets on their books at the level with which they are currently valued. This is to prevent a buildup of pretend-capital on a banks books. Our problem is that far too many banks carried these derivative mortgage securities on their books. Now that the market for them has collapsed, their value is anybody’s guess, but they’re not worth very much. Banks are having to write down the value of these worthless assets to reflect reality, which is destroying the banks capital structure. This is what killed WaMu and Wachovia more than anything else.
Before the crisis began, a change in the mark to market rule could have been made without causing a panic. But now – those who support this change would have us believe that everyone will forget that these securities are really worthless.
Doing away with m-to-m would allow banks to value these securites at the purchase value for bank capital purposes, even though they are really worth only 10 cents on the dollar. But they can’t hide the fact that we now know that these assets are mostly worthless.
Think about this – you are a corporate finance officer. Are you going to put your money in a bank that you know is insolvent, except for the fact that we have agreed to pretend that a bunch of worthless paper they hold is worth what they paid for it? These banks literally would be backed by nothing but monopoly money, and everyone would know it. And just as importantly, we would all know that such a rule could be changed any instant the government wishes to knock that bank out and take it over. Would you put even 10 cents in that bank? Would you loan money to that bank on any terms? No way – and neither will anyone else.
There’s a similar problem with the insurance proposal – simply put, you can’t buy insurance after you’ve already totalled the car out. Doesn’t work that way. Explanation doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.
This has got to be my favorite GOP spin *EVER*:
“Nancy Pelosi hurt our feelings, so we decided to ignore the economic crisis.”
That is AWESOME. Heckuva job, guys!
Bresch,
Pelosi- Worst Speaker ever.
House- Most unpopular ever.
Well, bresch, I guess we’re all on the road to being bankrupt drunks just like you.
[…] Small Dead Animals AJ: Since Obama wanted all the credit, doesn’t he get all the blame? by TheAnchoress @ 5:42 pm. Filed under America, Barack Obama, Dumb Democrat moves, Economic […]
I’m glad the bill failed.
Anything the Democrats accept without bitching about must be a bad thing.
breschau
This has got to be my favorite GOP spin *EVER*: “Nancy Pelosi hurt our feelings, so we decided to ignore the economic crisis.
bresch, as usual, you are full of sh*t. the repub leaders said at the most that speech changed the vote of maybe 12 repubs. those 12 would not have changed the outcome. I think it probably influenced more than 12 dems that were going to vote for it.
WWS, you clearly don’t have a clue.
Redteam, I’ve always liked you’re posts, but you just don’t realize how totally f**ked we are right now.
I’m not kidding. We are looking at 20% unemployment within 6 months, and the total collapse of free market economics for a generation, if not two.
We’ve lost everything today. And tomorrow it gets worse.