Well, you've been putting a lot of energy into convincing people not to do the bailout. So will you resign if it succeeds?

None of us out here in the peanut gallery are privy to what these Senators were shown or told.
Is it possible that if we did know, the Nation would have panicked and our financial crisis would have worsened?

I’ve heard people say “Of course Congress will pass the plan, because they benefit from Wall Street” Doh!!

They’re trying to save their millions, don’t you think the side benefit is we’ll save our hundreds, or thousands. Our businesses? Our homes if this thing worsens.

I’ve heard some citizens say “why should we believe Bush, since he’s cried wolf so many times.”
It’s because the wolf did eventually appear, and ignore it at your peril.

I remember reading events leading to the Great Depression; there were those that kept saying that government should not bailout the speculators. Six months later, those same people were frantically writing and begging for government help, but it came to late.

I don't want to take the risk, that if YOU"RE wrong, you'll hang your head and say Soorrryyy.

What? Thats supposed to alleviate the Great suffering that could occur?

It strikes me that the defenders of the bailout bill are very much like the defenders of the Iraq invasion. They say:

We're not privy to all the information.

Our leaders know things we don't know.

The consequences of not doing anything could be severe.

We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud (or a mushrooming depression).

It's an argument based on lack of knowledge and fear.

The reality is that none of us (including the most knowledgeable economists) knows what may happen if we bail out the financial markets or if we don't.

My question is, if we're going to pump $700 billion of taxpayer's borrowed money into the economy to help prevent a collapse, is the best way to do that by buying up bad debt and assets that currently have no market and are nearly impossible to value? Why not use the money instead to make loans to profitable businesses or to buy equity in financial companies that are strong, giving those strong financial companies more liquidity to lend? Or why not use the money to build needed infrastructure, stimulating a boom in construction-related jobs and businesses, which would, in turn, create more consumption helping all businesses?

My problem with the bailout is that we're getting stuck with a lot of junk with very little certainty of any return. I know some people (like Dan K) argue that the junk may not be junk--and Dan's right about that, some of the junk could eventually have value--but it just as well could be exactly what the market now thinks it is: worthless crap. Remember, a lot of the securities we are apparently buying aren't actually failed mortgages. They are derivative instruments that are only distantly connected to the mortgages. If the mortgages turned out to be better than expected, the derivatives may still not rise in value because their flaws have been "exposed" and investors may no longer be enamored of them as useful hedging vehicles. If this is the case, these derivatives will remain worthless. While a lot of people want to move from "mark-to-market" accounting (which merely means valuing things at what they sell for in the marketplace--normally a very sensible accounting procedure), a lot of these derivatives have no value without a market for them. So how do you value them without a market? Black-Scholes works fine for simple derivatives (options)--but a lot of the newer vehicles are far more complex and there's no proven way to value them other than by their market price. It just seems to me that there are a lot better ways to pump $700 billion into the economy than by buying stuff that no one can value and that may simply evaporate.

Well, this is another reason the bailout must be stopped now. A lame duck administration should not be allowed to borrow massive amounts of money to buy bad assets in our names. By the time we know whether or not this worked, Bush and Paulson will be gone. So either say no now, or give up any notions of accountability.

Down 288 now; this is so typical; on any other day all the online sources would be wailing and showing pictures of starving babies if the markets opened with performance like this.

Today, after the Senate signs on to the bailout, the market tanks and there's almost no mention... except that MSNBC says claims it's the unemployment numbers.

Every day of explanations about this thing is more pathetic than the last.

I've read that based on actual research into other similar banking crises in countries with similar economies, that the thing to do is to (indeed) act quickly, *don't* have the government buy the bad assets, *do* directly recapitalize banks with a chance of surviving, directly support mortgages with a chance of making it, and let the rest fail.

This is in a report that *I've* seen cited more than once. Paulson doesn't have access to this information?

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.cfm?sk=22345.0

My guess is that we're not doing what informed opinion recommends because Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley--leveraged 30 or more to 1--would simply not make the cut.

There are many similar takes and proposals on this situation. It would be hard to make an argument that Dean's remarks have been much different than Warren Buffet's remarks or his actual actions, e.g., to get preferred stock. It is quite interesting that Warren had 32 billion in cash sitting around. I'm sure he's the only person in the world sitting on a pile of cash at the moment.

Paulson's proposal was abysmal and the revision didn't changed it in any fundamental way. The situation is so bad that House Republicans who would not vote for it sound like paragons of virtue even though they are not putting forward anything like a real alternative or solution.

What should disturb people is the lack of any fact finding or even cursory discussion of alternatives in the great halls of Congress. The alternatives are not more complicated than Paulson's plan.

What good is it to momentarily stall a panic only to have it flare up again? I, like many others I suspect, hope that my current assessment is completely wrong. We will get a politically expedient solution put together by a group whose track record is something less than stirling.

Does anyone think that even one Senator read the entirely of that bill? How much time do think their staff has to understand whatever provision they were assigned? How well qualified do you think all the staff involved are? I probably know more about bits and pieces of this than most but I don't live and breath this stuff. So much about this looks bad without having to dig very deep and the "markets" are reacting accordingly.

The debate is not about doing nothing versus doing something. The debate is about doing something that will address the financial crisis and not just prolong it.