Coming soon: The $810 billion bailout
October 3, 2008 | 9:57
am
Let's all practice a little thought leadership this morning: The $700 billion bailout died in the House earlier this week. The bailout headed for a vote this morning is bigger, messier and more expensive. It's $810 billion by my math -- the original $700 billion "No Banker Left Behind" bill that was first written by Henry Paulson, and $110 billion more in much-needed unrelated tax cuts.
I'll have more after the vote, expected fairly soon.
--Peter Viles
Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to Peter Viles.
Technically, it's probably more accurate to refer to the extra $110 billion as additional payoff money or bribe money, since the original bailout bill is exactly the same, but the Senate added an extra 200 pages of garbage to literally buy votes in the House. The sad thing is that it will almost certainly work: the only thing which we all know motivates Congress people (or anyone else) to betray their country more than idealism is money. It's not like the 90% of voters who didn't approve of the country wasting $700 billion to pay off banks who caused the housing market meltdown are going to want it now that it also wastes $110 billion on payoffs to rich people and pork projects...
Posted by: Nick | October 03, 2008 at 10:07 AM
A bailout was needed - but not this one. We got screwed by our elected officials.
Boxer and Feinstein have to go (I am a democrat).
Posted by: fred | October 03, 2008 at 10:12 AM
The official name for it is the 'Bailout to Nowhere' bill.
It's very funny. A few days ago, after the defeat of the $710 billion bailout bill, a question was polled and reported on NPR and the question was 'Whom does the public blame more, Republicans or Democrats?' (It turned out that the answer was the Republicans. But that's not my point.)
Blame?
What could possilby lead them to frame the question like that? I thought they were listner supported.
Posted by: MyLessThanPrimeBeef | October 03, 2008 at 11:04 AM
Well I sure hope it works!The speed-of-light measurement was off by a factor of nearly 100.
The technology of the era was not up the task. With new technology came new calculations for the speed of light path traveled in a vacuum one meter length is 1/299 792 458 of a second.
One day a Zen master was walking in the jungle and came across a large man eating tiger charging behind him, in a split second the made the decision to run down the path to escape the man eating tiger, suddenly he was at the end of the path which was a edge of a shear drop cliff dropping a long way to jagged rocks, so below which would be a sure death. So, the Zen master was faced with being eaten by a large man eating tiger or jumping off the cliff to sure death! The Zen master looked at the edge and notice a small vine at the edge of the cliff growing over the edge, with a split second decision he decided to use the frail vine to get over the edge of the cliff. The frail vine began to give way and the Zen master was falling to sure death to the jagged rocks below, when he notice a fresh beautiful bright red strawberry growing on the cliff right in front of him, the last thought from the Zen master was this is got to be the best tasting strawberry he has ever had. The economy would be the Man-eating tiger and the frail vine is the rescue or bailout plan. The strawberry is the pork barrel attached to the rescue or bailout plan.
Local Entrepreneur is selling Caps & T-shirt with the logo “Got $700 billion?” http://www.cafepress.com/092308
Posted by: Laisseraller | October 03, 2008 at 01:29 PM
'Hmmmm, we will see,' said the Zen master.
Hey, Charlies Wilson, how is going?
Posted by: MyLessThanPrimeBeef | October 03, 2008 at 02:04 PM