Yes, yes, I know the financial crisis is not strictly a green issue -- except insofar as it dries up capital desperately needed for green investments -- but I just have to put some kind of note on record here. This is the most bizarre political season in memory, and the last few days have taken it to new realms entirely.
So there's this crisis, right? Bush, Paulson, and most of the Congressional leadership seem focused on taking immediate action to bail banks out before a cascading crash. Some Democrats push back and demand taxpayer equity and oversight. Paulson says fine. Early today, there are reports that a bipartisan plan has been hashed out and is basically ready to go.
Enter John McCain. This drama, like everything in his world, is all about him. He'll ride to the rescue at the last minute. He "suspends" his campaign (though ads have run all day in numerous states, his surrogates are all over the place attacking Obama, and he gave interviews to every network tonight) and begs out of Friday's debate. Today, he parachutes into D.C. for a meeting he specifically asked the White House to convene.
At the meeting, he doesn't take a stand or lay out any clear sense of what he'll do -- he just speaks up vaguely about an alternative plan the House Republicans have put together. (The House Republican plan is universally derided as a joke -- it centrally involves, and I'm not kidding, tax cuts for the rich.) That's just enough to throw everything off the rails. Now what had been a reasonably bipartisan effort has become bitter and divided. There's no plan, and nobody knows when there will be one. McCain's sole effect was to empower the House Republicans. Look:
In the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to "blow it up" by withdrawing her party's support for the package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.
"I didn't know you were Catholic," Ms. Pelosi said, a wry reference to Mr. Paulson's kneeling, according to someone who observed the exchange. She went on: "It's not me blowing this up, it's the Republicans."
Mr. Paulson sighed. "I know. I know."
House Republicans have their reasons for tacking against this bailout -- they're catching hell from constituents -- but trying to gain political advantage for McCain was one of those reasons:
Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Senate banking committee, denounced the session as "a rescue plan for John McCain," and proclaimed it a waste of precious hours that could have been spent negotiating.
But a top aide to Mr. Boehner said it was Democrats who had done the political posturing. The aide, Kevin Smith, said Republicans revolted, in part, because they were chafing at what they saw as an attempt by Democrats to jam through an agreement on the bailout early Thursday and deny Mr. McCain an opportunity to participate in the agreement.
Got that? Getting it done quickly amounts to leaving little Johnny out, and we can't have that. He's the hero, dammit!
Then again, give them their due. They do seem willing to accept the consequences:
According to one GOP lawmaker, some House Republicans are saying privately that they'd rather "let the markets crash" than sign on to a massive bailout.
"For the sake of the altar of the free market system, do you accept a Great Depression?" the member asked.
Now the country's economy is teetering on collapse. Nobody knows if there will be a debate on Friday. It's chaos. Nobody has any idea what the political fallout will be.
For my part, I remain stunned -- and I thought at this point I was beyond being stunned -- by the sheer narcissistic vainglory of John McCain. This kind of impulsive gambling with a situation this serious ...
We live in strange, strange times.
What are the chances of a cap-and-trade system being established in the U.S. this year?
[UPDATED] While the big cats cower, time to build robust food economies
Messaging that can save the clean energy bill
Comments
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josullivan58 Posted 7:35 pm
25 Sep 2008
The public is blaming the republicans for the financial crisis and in response they are holding the country and country's well-being hostage for damage control.
Now I have serious doubts about McCain doing anything about climate change if he becomes president. I am suspecting a Bush style position reversal by McCain. The same people who engineered it for Bush work for McCain.
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 10:53 pm
25 Sep 2008
Clearly and evidently, the colossal global economy is an ever-expanding, artificially designed, manmade construction. For whom does the world's human economy exist? To fulfill the wishes and insatiable desires of those with ill-gotten gains? Only to provide security for the greediest among us?
And, of all things, for many too many leaders of my not-so-great generation of elders to extoll the virtues of their unbridled avariciousness and applaud each other by passing out 'awards' to each other for the triumph of their greed, all of this is plainly outrageous.
In light of what has occurred in the both the financial system and the real economy in recent years, can someone please explain what the terms "fairness" and "equity" mean? Can anyone find examples of these phenomena in the distribution of wealth by the organizers and managers of the world's human economy today?
Who knows, perhaps change is in the offing.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
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birdboy Posted 1:30 am
26 Sep 2008
What we don't need is McCain and Obama interrupting congress's work- they are no longer just congressmen- they have been transformed into media magnets and political protagonists- their presence in congress can only be a disruption, as we have already seen. Yet again, the GOP has done what they do so well- push Democratic buttons and point the finger when they jump. Like that kid in grade school who pulls your hair and gets you in trouble for interrupting class.
The bailout will not fix anything, but will only prop up home prices and the construction industry, further inflating the bubble. Clearly, there is a glut of new property on the market, and home prices must come down. The construction industry and those who pumped money into new real estate must suffer the consequences of their actions- developers will lose money, and sprawl will slow down and housing will become more affordable- perhaps a good thing, in the long run.
Funny, the bailout of the housing market sounds just like the current administration's solution to the climate and energy crisis- pump more money, pump more oil!
a liberal in redsville
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LGT Posted 1:33 am
26 Sep 2008
It's all done "fairly" and "squarely" and in the open [why it's called daylight robbery,]to, in the words of Hank Paulson, "benefiting the American people, because today's fragile financial system puts their economic well-being at risk."
John M. Keynes: "Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
http://msrb.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/more-quotes-on-finan ...
Here's another one [I don't condone capital punishment, but am prepared to make an ...]
"The goldsmith bankers in Amsterdam got a law passed making it a hanging offense to start a run on the goldsmith. But one day there was a run, and of course the goldsmith could not pay. The matter was resolved not by hanging the unknown individual who started the run, but by hanging the goldsmith."
http://msrb.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/quote-of-the-day-run ...
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Tom Philpott Posted 1:39 am
26 Sep 2008
From today's Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/us/politics/26campaign
Senator John McCain had intended to ride back into Washington on Thursday as a leader who had put aside presidential politics to help broker a solution to the financial crisis. Instead he found himself in the midst of a remarkable partisan showdown, lacking a clear public message for how to bring it to an end.
At the bipartisan White House meeting that Mr. McCain had called for a day earlier, he sat silently for more than 40 minutes, more observer than leader, and then offered only a vague sense of where he stood, said people in the meeting.
And this vague performance is supposed to be an excuse to skip the debate? Seems like he's bungling into a PR disaster.
Victual Reality
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Bob Wallace Posted 2:36 am
26 Sep 2008
If Obama were to blow this presidential election out of the water would some Republican Reps likely lose their jobs? (I'm guessing so.)
So what might we have seen yesterday? Perhaps an attempt by worried Rep Reps trying to help McCain out, help him look presidential and/or screw up the debate schedule so that Palin doesn't have to go before the public?
(I'm guessing that Palin's performance to date is causing a lot of concern. Couric tossed her some softballs ..., no, set the ball on a tee post and she couldn't hit it. Her trainers know that she needs a good coherent response to the "I can see Russia" stuff. They've had a long time to teach her a reasonable-sounding paragraph, and she couldn't even pull that off.)
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