Before he was declared president, Gov. Bush did not just bash nation-building, but he also slammed bailouts for lenders “who ought to be able to evaluate risk themselves.” Of course he was talking about bailouts of banks from poor countries, not ours, yet. (Our country might want to consider working on an IMF application soon.)
Why did the bailout bill fail in the beginning?
Easy, the Bush administration. (Let’s leave those individual decisions that led us to this point alone for the moment.) Let’s just talk about the House vote on Monday, Sept 29. Was it Nancy Pelosi’s partisan speech before the vote? (story here, text of speech here) Yeah right. ”Gee, I was gonna vote with my President and prevent a financial meltdown, but her speech just hacked me off so forget it.” It apparently did not affect a bunch of democrats who voted no on the bill as well (majority D’s voted in favor, majority R’s voted against). We don’t need a complex Wolf Blitzer fancy pants analysis to understand it either (see maps, charts here ).
Nobody trusts Bush or any of his people anymore, not even the Republican party. The lead up to the war with Iraq was exaggerated at the very least. Donald Rumsfeld’s denials about how well our military was equipped in Iraq were bogus. ”Brownie, you’re doing a hecka of a job.” Alberto Gonzales fired people because they were Dems and then lied about it. ”I am the decider.” The list goes on and on. When foreclosures started spiking, Bush did little or nothing. No bailouts for people who should have known the risks he said. When things started looking shaky Bush and Paulson explain the financial system was fine and then in the last two weeks we are suddenly in crisis mode and they need $700 billion with no strings attached. The bill failed because people are sick of the lies and the overreaching.
These guys have not read their poll numbers it seems. If you want to use $700 billion to bailout Wallstreet, would you have started explaining the problem to the American people earlier? Wouldn’t you offer a proposal that would be carefully written with safeguards for homeowners and taxpayers (rather than the two page blank check the Administration wanted Congress to sign)? [CNNMoney says it was three pages, bill here.] These guys cried wolf (not Blitzer) once too often, and the real financial wolf might come this time.
Filed under: National Foreclosure News
