They voted it down

[dreamflower]

http://www.foxnews.com/

Umm...I have a sinking feeling that this is not a Good Thing.

Not that it should ever have happened in the first place...

Comments

[baranduin.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to wonder if we're even going to have a functioning country by the time election day rolls around!

[dreamflower]

So am I. Bush has totally tanked our economy, and it doesn't matter who gets elected, they are stuck with cleaning up his mess.

[piplover.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's not that bad. The Government is panicking because their interference and incompetence is starting to show, and they're trying to cover their butts. Thinks will work out.

*Hugs*

[dreamflower]

Of course they are trying to cover their butts. And I do think it will work out in the long run. But in the meantime, it's the rest of us who are going to have to tighten our belts and suffer for their mismanagement.

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

I fear that no matter what they do, the people who will suffer are middle and lower class working Americans.

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. Rich, powerful people always come out all right. :(

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

Yep, I've been a lower income worker most of my life, and I have very little in the way of savings. This stock market plunge is hurting me a hell of a lot worse than it's going to hurt some millionaires.

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

I have some money overseas, but it doesn't matter if the economy collapses here, then it will hit everywhere,,. Scary!

[dreamflower]

Of course; they are always the ones who suffer. The inflation's already getting out of hand. Today I paid about 5% more for about 10% less groceries than two weeks ago.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

The last time we packed so much money and "ownership" into so few hands we had a Great Depression. Once the protections put in place after that were dismantled (by McCain!) it was only a matter of time before things imploded.

They'll come up with something -- hopefully something that will include allowing people to renegotiate their mortgages instead of being stuck.

[dreamflower]

I do hope they come up with something sooner rather than later--though it may already be too late.

We are in for a decade or more of really difficult times, I fear.

[surgicalsteel.livejournal.com]

I think things are f***ed up badly enough that the bailout in some form needs to happen. But the Republicans going to the floor knowing that they likely didn't have the votes - hoping that knowing the stock market would plunge would change 'no' votes to 'yes' votes? Completely unconscionable.

What are they thinking??? It's like they want us to go into another Great Depression!

F***'s sake.

[dreamflower]

Yes, it's a lousy thing to have to have a bailout to begin with--but yes, they are going to *have* to do something.

I'm afraid it will be even worse than the Great Depression--there's so much more to go wrong, and all the safeguards put in place to protect us after that have been dismantled in recent years.

*sigh*

I do hope that the McCain supporters will get hit with a clue-stick by this, but I don't hold out much hope.

[surgicalsteel.livejournal.com]

My landlady put up a McCain sign in her yard today. My landlady, who if the hospital hadn't signed a lease with her? She wouldn't have been able to afford heating oil this winter. *sighs*

[rhapsody11.livejournal.com]

That's what we were talking about this morning before we signed the final stuff for our new home: I swear this is all party politics connected to the elections so that they look good for now. They simply did not look further ahead than Nov the 4th. But what stuns me the most is that you have this whole thing about McCain so dramatically postponing his campaign (he most certainly did not help), they go in to negotiate, they finally get all their noses in the same direction... and then it gets put up to vote. I ain't sure who negotiated for the republican side, but they why did they do that if they knew they couldn't close ranks. :-/

[dreamflower]

I think because a lot of the legislators in both parties didn't even make up their minds till it hit the floor, and then they panicked. Yes, they are used to budgets that include words like "billions" and "trillions", but when push came to shove I think they could not bring themselves to spend that much all at on go, especially when a lot of the pundits kept talking about how it only benefitted the people on Wall Street. Which of course was not true.

And the House leadership were pushing to get a quick vote because everyone said if it wasn't done soon, it would not work because things would melt-down to the point of no return.

It's like quicksand.

[surgicalsteel.livejournal.com]

I agree that McCain really didn't help at all - there's an awful lot of Republicans in Congress who really really don't like him. It's like that particular group has decided to completely thumb their noses at party leadership on both sides - because McCain's nominally the head of their party, and some of them are trying to claim that they voted against the bill because of a speech Nancy Pelosi made right before the vote.

WTF? You're going to let the economy tank (with the entire world watching you on cable news) because your feelings were hurt??? If it's true, it's unacceptable, and I hope they all get voted out of office - and if it's not, it's one of the most ludicrous political lies ever.

[lbilover.livejournal.com]

I've been opposed to the bailout as proposed because the whole situation just smacks too much of what has happened in the past- 'the sky is falling, do what we tell you without questioning asap'. That same fear-mongering resulted in the Patriot Act and the Iraq War. How many of us have any real understanding of what the proposal is, how it works, what it will mean? How did they arrive at the $700 billion number? Etc., etc. Apparently economic experts signed a petition against it, and I just don't have faith that this would be a good thing for us in the long run. Not to mention that the people proposing it got us into the current mess, and I have a hard time trusting any of them to get us out of it without lining their own nests with a significant portion of the money. Call me cynical.

I guess we'll find out. It's a grim time, that's for sure.

[dreamflower]

I'm not particularly in favor of it--but you are right about the panicking part. Problem is, I think there really is something to panic about this time.

Hopefully someone will come up with SOMETHING!

This would be a good time for friendly aliens to land and offer a solution.

[thebeecharmer.livejournal.com]

It's all going to boil down to finger-pointing and partisan politics. The powerful will protect each other and the rest of us will be expected to sit back down in the primordial ooze from whence we came. This is why I despise all politicians.I joked last election to a Scottish pal last election that we should just lease the government to Donald Trump. In retrospect I wonder how funny that actually was...

[dreamflower]

Not Donald Trump. But I've heard recently from several CEOs of businesses that *have* weathered this, and some of them seem to have some really good solutions.

Politics are so nasty these days; there are no statesmen left, only politicians.

Mine? Bring back monarchy and put Aragorn in charge. ;-)

[thebeecharmer.livejournal.com]

Is it too late to rejoin the UK?

[dreamflower]

The DH keeps saying we should tell England we made a mistake and they should take us back--but I don't think they'd want us now!

[surgicalsteel.livejournal.com]

The UK's banks are starting to tank, too. They've got enough trouble of their own. I'd threaten to move to Ireland, but with one of the Euro banks failing, too? I think the UK and the EU are going to have the same damn problems we're having and for the same damn reason - it's a matter of when, not if.

I'll footnote that by saying I'm not an economist, but I do share a bed with one. ;)

Hubby's MBA was a dual major in IT and economics and he used to be faculty in the University College Dublin School of Commerce.

[dreamflower]

Yes, this is going to be worldwide, really. Too much is interconnected these days for it not to be.

It's going to be worse than the Great Depression of the 30s, I fear. At least back then our country still had a lot of family farms, and in rural areas, people were able to do subsistence farming and not starve. And families were more connected back then, less scattered, so people had a bit more of a support system than now.

It's looking like we are really in for it.

[elandulin.livejournal.com]

We do live in astonishing times, don't we?

I'm not sure what I think about all this. I'm opposed in principle to bailing out people who can bail out themselves, but the problem is bigger--systemic--and I think we can count on the fact that even on a good day it's not engineered to do the masses any favor beyond shoring up the illusion of stability.

There are several economists who say we ought to let the dike crumble, that plugging up the holes will only prolong the inevitable because it is already compromised beyond repair. The problem is, we all know who suffers most in a flood.

[dreamflower]

It's already affecting those of us who must live from paycheck to paycheck without a parachute. Many of those people were already suffering, and now it's going to be much worse.

And while plugging up the holes may not provide a permanent solution, it may at least allow more people to find safety before the dam completely bursts.

(((hugs)))

Good to hear from you again, dear! I was thinking about you just the other day!

[elandulin.livejournal.com]

Been thinking about you, too. I was hoping I wasn't in the dog house!

[elandulin.livejournal.com]

Almost forgot! As for how all this continues to affect all of us: my younger daughter and her husband found the recession had landed on their doorstep around the first of August. The upshot of that was that she went back to work part time and baby grandson now comes here from 7:30 am to 1:30 pm five days a week! You can imagine what this has done to my writing schedule. Absolute disaster!