No More Juice

George W. will very soon know if "this sucker is going to go down."

The failure of today’s economic rescue bill is an indication of how little juice is left in the vessel that was the Bush Administration. In the midst of a serious crisis and after numerous warnings about its seriousness, his own party repudiated him today. With the markets tumbling, Republican members of Congress voted against the measure by a two to one margin. We’ll find out how urgent was the passage of this bill in the days and weeks ahead. What we do know is that Bush futures aren’t even trading. There just isn’t a market for them.

It doesn’t bode well for John McCain. Voters are likely to choose to vote for anybody else rather than vote in another Republican President.

It’s a Bill and its Radioactive

President Bush Goes Before Cameras Yet Again to Calm Markets

Just before the Asian markets opened at 6 p.m. EDT, Sunday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) came before the television microphones and said there was a rescue bill or a bailout bill or whatever you would like to call it, that it was up on the Internet and that it was frozen. Done. Clearly nobody in Congress wants to touch this thing: it is that radioactive. If they pass it, voters will think its a bailout for the rich creeps on Wall Street and they will vote out everybody who favored it. They don’t pass it, the market tanks, banks fail, the new Great Depression rolls in and voters vote out everybody who favored it and everybody who didn’t.

The Democrats have a majority in both houses and can pass any kind of bill they want, but Rep. Pelosi said “It’s their bill, it’s a Republican administration.” The Democrats don’t want to get burned on this thing unless a big group of Republicans will give them cover by voting for it too. We still don't know if the votes are there.

It’s a no win, everybody loses kind of bill. Meanwhile none of us really knows what will happen to the markets if this bill passes--or if it doesn't. We can always go by what that well-known economic expert George W. is reported to have said at Thursday’s acrimonious White House meeting: “Look, if we don’t loosen up credit, this sucker could go down.”