Category: Economics

Radley Balko has a few comments about some of the stuff that’s made it into the bailout bill to sweeten the deal and get enough votes. Check it out. I think the mental health provisions were part of the original bill that the Senate hijacked for the bailout. (For some procedural reason, it’s easier to… Read more

[Update: I’ve been reading a lot more about the crisis, and a lot of what I say here is wrong. For example, I assumed that financial experts knew how to evaluate the structured deals and investment vehicles, and therefore that the uncertainty arises because of the difficulty in valuing real estate. Apparently, however (and I… Read more

So, the bailout bill has failed. Cool. Scary too, but cool. I hope it stays this way. As word got out that the bill was failing, the market fell. It fell a lot. It fell more than ever before, even more than it fell on 9/11. Of course, when I say “the market,” I’m talking… Read more

The bailout plan has apparently hit a snag after a meeting of congressional leaders at the White House broke down into a “contentious shouting match.” Add to that the failure of WaMu last night and I think the folks on Wall Street are going to go apeshit react strongly. Then again, if I could really predict… Read more

This is probably wrong in so many ways, but why are we helping the bad financial institutions? Wouldn’t it make more sense to help out the good ones? I think, first of all, that the plan is not to simply give away the $700 billion. Instead, the U.S. Treasury will take over bad mortgage investments.… Read more