Um. Okay. No bailout for now.

[xiphias]

So, the House Republicans -- as well as a pretty good number of House Democrats -- have rejected the bailout plan.

I have absolutely no idea if this is a good thing or a bad thing. None whatsoever.

In general, though, if this means that they have to go back and put together a new plan that actually has THOUGHT behind it, one that they can EXPLAIN to people, I suspect that would be a good thing. I was uncomfortable with the "AAAGHHH! PASS THIS BILL NOW SKY FALLING EMERGENCY DANGER WILL ROBINSON GIVE US MONEY THIS SECOND" thing.

I could very well be wrong. Maybe I ought to be buying a shotgun and rifle and stocking up on canned goods -- I have no idea.

. . . I kinda want a .22 bolt action rifle, anyway . . .

Comments

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Yes, but it's misleading to try to make it about the individual mortgages. The entire industry was engaged in very highly leveraged speculative investing. While individual people did buy more than they could afford, there was a lot of predatory lending and lying about the terms of loans. But meanwhile, the mortgages themselves, and what was effectively the insurance on the mortgages was being bought and sold in a ridiculously leveraged fashion, often by entities who were leveraging assets they no longer had (or that were no longer worth what they had previously been assessed by) with very little regulation.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

I meant "we" in a very broad sense. If it was just mortgages, it wouldn't be a general crisis.