Friday, October 3, 2008

Bailout Bill Passes House

The revised Bailout Bill has passed the House today by a vote of 263 to 171. Thoughts?

3 comments:

Tim Moreland said...

To start things off on a topic that will rarely be discussed, the Bailout Bill included a load of unrelated and obscure tax breaks, as well as other examples of pork barreling. Click here for several examples.

One of the politicians/commentators today spoke of how the economy was like a heart-attack victim. On the contrary, it seems more like the economy broke its arm and the government is performing expensive and dangerous open-heart surgery. GDP has grown well recently and business, real estate, and consumer loan numbers are higher than a year ago. The crisis seems to be contained mainly to Wall Street.

What would have been the downside of continuing to let banks fail and have the FED, FDIC, and private banks/investors deal with the problem on a case-by-case basis?

This bill seems far too rushed and gives unacceptable powers to the Executive branch. Throw in the fact that $700 billion is about what the Iraq War has cost so far and we have ourselves quite a few similarities between the two.

SAE Virginia Delta said...
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Josh Knox said...

The question that kept coming back to me while watching the bailout vote and listening to the media commentary leading up to it was why were no other possible solutions ever discussed?

The media attention made it seem like America's options were 700 Billion dollar bailout, or complete economic failure. Alternative ways of freeing up capital, or alternative bailout amounts (where does the number come from anyway) were never brought up in the news, nor as far as I can tell by any of the 171 house members who continued to oppose the bailout.