Friday, Sept. 26, 2008 13:09 PDT
A cry of rage from Wall Street

How devastating it must feel to be betrayed by your own flesh and blood. Andrew Sullivan informs us that U.S. News & World Report's James Pethokoukis received a distraught e-mail from a money manager last night:

I am a lifelong ( 51 years old) "rock-ribbed" conservative.... What an eye opener this week has been! I now realize what a blowhard Newt truly is by advocating the GOP bail on the Paulson Plan. As a professional money manager I can tell you I am shocked, dismayed and depressed that the Speaker would excoriate the GOP to abandon this plan which is URGENT and necessary to avoid a financial catastrophe that once commenced may be irreversible. The level of ignorance of financial and economic reality displayed by the Speaker , Rep. Boehner, Sen. Shelby , et al, has been frightening and sad. I thought the GOP had a better grasp of such matters than the Dems. Apparently not. And if this has been pure election gamesmanship as I suspect? The willingness to play politics with the U.S. financial markets is appalling and disgusting.

The angry Wall Streeter goes on to say he wants his McCain campaign contributions back and he will "not be voting GOP this year" for the first time since 1976.

Let us put aside for the moment the disconcerting fact that there are people managing large sums of money on Wall Street who are only now realizing what a blowhard Newt Gingrich is. Instead, let's make sure Newt gets the credit he deserves for the current mess. In this week's edition of his newsletter, Winning The Future, Gingrich does recommend that Republicans bail on the bailout plan. Because they'd just be repeating the mistakes made by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In the 1930s, faced with an immediate crisis of bad debt, the government adopted a series of bad ideas -- tax increases and regulatory interventions that allowed the Depression to extend until World War II.

If we're not careful we're going to allow bad politics in Washington to lead to bad policies and the result is going to be a long period of weak growth and massive indebtedness.

Huh. Weird. I thought the last eight years had resulted in weak growth and massive indebtedness. And while once upon a time I might have bristled at the attempt by triumphalist Gingrich-era Republicans to trash the New Deal, right now, it just looks pretty silly.
― Andrew Leonard

Quite frankly, I'm shocked that the current incarnation of the GOP split with "their" president.

I don't know, something smells fishy there, but I'm not going to argue with the Billionaire Bailout being stalled, it gives us Americans a chance to let those supporting it that they are on notice if they vote for this thing.

This is all after the fact...the REPS don't want the big govt. takeover of the debts. I'm surprized that no one is blaming the ridgedness of the banks to not initiate with their debtors these loans. It's become a free for all with the lending institutions...that's the real crime here. They want the govt. to do what they won't do for their lenders.

McCain explained it last night.

sorry but no bailout or help.I say more like criminal proceedings.

Who would you like to start with...all the DEMS, including OBAMA, who took funds from freddie Mac?

McCain said it last night...that the legislators on both copped out... & it's come back to bite them ALL in the butt.

It's largely election year politics. These House Republicans are facing a wave of anti-Bush sentiment in their home races and this gives them one last gasp at an issue they can play up to the home voters:

"We didn't cave to Bush or Wall Street."

That's the game. Hopefully, enough voters will be sophisticated enough to see through the ruse and see these hypocrites who gave Bush everything he wanted for 8 years are now putting "Politics First" in an effort to save their careers. And they're risking a collapse of our economy in doing so.

I'd start with the company execs then work my way up but we both know it won't happen.

They are not risking a collapse of our economy. The Paulson Plan is an outrage and they can see it.

Democrats appear to be agreeing to it for political reasons. They did not see its truth in time and to NOT agree to it now would place them in a bad political position.

So Politics once again takes the front seat and the patriots within the democratic party are afraid to STAND UP and be counted on the side of the People and risk censure by their party.

I see. So the Democrats are supporting a Bush administration plan to bail out Wall Street and that's a political benefit to them?

Yeah, that makes total sense.

Absolute sense...

If they back away now it would mean that a republican HOUSE plan would be the only one on the table that...

McCain would rise and Obama would drop. That is the nature of politics.

With the race as close as it is. (Independents will decide it... they are split 50/50) that is an unacceptable alternative.

When the final plan is passed, we'll see who was posturing.

it kinda makes me laugh. Bailing out Wall Street goes against every philosophical principle of the Republican party. But they feel that there is no alternative

I really hate to say this but I am worried that the passing of the plan if it is in any way associated to the Paulson model will result in something that no one could have forseen.

something that will echo through history and shock the world.

you can count on "unforseen circumstances"

almost all of our problems today are a result of someone tinkering a few years ago. You just have to look at the long term view to see the squiggles on the graph leveling out

I don't know if it's going to be unforeseen or something out of the mind of the "conspiracy theorists", I can see the North American Union and their little Amero currency being rammed in right behind this. They've already devalued our dollar to near Peso quality, what else do they need to do.

The thing is if they put us into this NAU, we can kiss our Bill of Rights goodbye.

haha here is what I see

America is consumed with a culture war to decide whether it is going to be overall liberal or conservative

and every issue is framed in this battle

meantime, China and India are industrializing and charging ahead technologically and economically. We are going to become a second tier nation and world politics and economics are going to be defined for us

they are estimting 200,000,000 new car owners in China alone in the next ten years. what kind of cars I wonder. American? doubtful

Oh, yea, If our economy doesn't retool itself soon, we might as well start trying to plant our own food, dig wells and hunker down, because bailout or no, this thing we call Freedom is on life support.