Posts Tagged ‘Bailout’

House votes on bailout bill

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

We started watching at around 12:30 and missed the morning debate. If Ron Paul spoke, we sadly missed it. We’re watching on c-span.org—this time it’s working. They’ve started voting right now!

Pelosi didn’t give the mad hatter speech this time.

65-23!

77-30!

93-36!

…somebody did a real evil laugh on the floor. We’re not sure who.

111-43…

…that same evil laugh. Twice more. Now a female evil laugh.

7:30 remaining and the vote is 121-57.

160-83 with 4 mins to go… and our c-span feed just died. The tubes of the Internet are getting clogged with all that new monies.

We’re back, 188-104 with 2 mins to go.

196-116 with one minute remaining…

People are clapping, it passed. We’re all doomed now kthxbai.

P.S. Gavel came down, 263-171.

Bailout, plus foreign policy bits

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008
  • Barack Obama, John McCain, and Joe Biden, along with the rest of the Senate except Ted Kennedy, were in town for the bailout vote this evening. The text of the Senate resolution, which was approved 74-25, can be found here.
  • We don’t feel expert enough to opine at great length about the bailout at this moment; what we will report is that the biggest portion of the student population here at Harvard College, including the editorial staff of the Crimson, seems to be in favor. We note that this is totally expected.
  • Various events in international politics are surely slipping past many people’s radars due to the current financial crisis:
  • The Senate decided to take care of some other random business before the bailout vote (because figured that Barack and John Sidney couldn’t hightail it out of there before they cast their yea for that?), like passing some motion for the railroad safety bill (more random tidbit: Joe Biden didn’t vote on that motion) that got a boost from the recent L.A. train wreck, and the U.S.-India nuclear deal, which was ratified 86-13.
  • Potentially, India is our new China. (but who are the new Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai?) Depending on how the bilateral relationship pans out over the years, this could end up as the-one-universally praised-accomplishment-by-an-otherwise-terrible-president, i.e., exactly how Nixon is remembered with regards to his China policy.
  • On the other hand, North Korea was in the news again—Christopher Hill (who is now more famous in Korea than Coca Cola) is in Pyongyang trying to save the disarmament deal after the North Koreans started rebuilding their nuclear facilities.

The ghost of Strom Thurmond returns from beyond, filibusters Senate bill on financial bailout.

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

…and this time he doesn’t have to go pee.

We are doomed

Monday, September 29th, 2008

Some ads which Google thought would be appropriate alongside our posts about the Paulson FAILOUT Plan:

  • Global Poverty
  • Sustainable Development
  • Global Poverty Solution
  • Global Poverty Act
  • Global Development

Paulson Failout, Post-Mortem

Monday, September 29th, 2008

Current Drudge headline: “DOWN IN FLAMES.”

The Democrat and Republican leaders are busy blaming each other for the failure, but looks like it was the voting public who killed it—most congressmen who face tough reelection fights voted against. [FiveThirtyEight] We’ll see if the Dow’s 777-point drop plus a second round of government/media propaganda changes that.

It’s time for our dose of escapist fantasy: US to buy back national debt. [BBC]

Bailout Plan Fails House Vote

Monday, September 29th, 2008

As the vote is happening I’ve been trying to get to C-SPAN.org to watch the vote live, but the server’s been busy because of the seven billion other people trying to do the same. Apparently as we type right here the House is taking a roll-call vote on the Paulson $700B financial bailout plan, and No is ahead…

Oh wait, they’ve just finished, and they rejected it. From Reuters.com:

“House rejects $700 billion Wall Street bailout billĀ  2:06pm EDT”
“House rejects $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill 228-205″

The word is that the vote was 228-205. You can read the defeated version (as there very may well be further attempts) of the bill here.