Notes on the Bailout

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NOTES ON THE BAILOUT….Sorry for the radio silence this afternoon. I spent most of the day feeling about the same way I did on 9/11, consumed with a debilitating combination of fury and despair. I don’t feel much better tonight, but here are a few thoughts on the failure of the bailout bill anyway:

The Republican Party is now officially hostage to a band of primitive conservative ideologues whose knowledge of economics was already outdated when Christians were being fed to lions. They are simply beyond belief.
I’m not much happier with the Jello-like support the bailout bill got from many of our leading liberals. Unfortunately, I include Brad DeLong in this group, but he’s certainly right when he says, “This Republican Party needs to be burned, razed to the ground, and the furrows sown with salt…”
John McCain deserves to be tarred and feathered. His behavior over the past week has been almost unbearably craven.
Barack Obama’s behavior has been a little better. But only a little. He hasn’t exactly displayed a backbone of steel on this issue.
An awful lot of people really, really still don’t get it. I swear, if I hear one more blogger or pundit suggesting that maybe it’s actually a good thing the bailout bill failed because now we have a chance to pass an even better bill, I’m going to scream.
After the failure of the bill, the GOP leadership invented a fairy tale about Nancy Pelosi being at fault for the vote debacle because she gave a partisan speech on the floor of the House. The press is almost unanimously reporting this seriously. If Republicans had blamed it on Santa Claus, I guess they would have reported that seriously too.
Do you know the old saying about credit? “It’s like oxygen. You don’t know how much you need it until it’s gone.” We’re about to go into financial hypoxia, and it’s not the millionaires who are going to suffer most from this.
There are many of you who probably think I’m overreacting. I hope you’re right.