Dire Circumstances
Bush’s prime-time address to the nation calls for urgent but measured action. Stabilize, protect your jobs, mortgages and credit and leave the regulatory redesign for later. Invites the presidential candidates in for talks with congressional candidates, financial leaders Thursday. Unorthodox, maybe unprecedented, but these are not normal times. Both are senators with a currently enhanced authority as party standard bearers, and this is a chance to show their ability to place our interests ahead of theirs. One of them will end up owning it, and all of us will end up owning one of them along with it.
Awaiting “stunt” denunciations. Also, some actual speech coverage. Meanwhile, here’s the latest re the big meeting. Turns out Obama has accepted. Stunt denunciation No. 1 as ABC posits the Bush confab could be a ploy to help McCain. I think it’s more likely a ploy to get something done and arrive at a consensus after the initial Paulson plan took fire and the whole process appeared in danger of being subjected to congressional business as usual.
OK, Bush speech roundup:
Gateway’s got your vid. Hot Air’s got your open thread. Michelle’s got your Bush Laugh Line of the Day: “I’m a strong believer in free enterprise.”
Glenn Reynolds finds “nothing hugely exciting” in the Bush speech, prefers Scott Ott’s important reporting report on Bush’s “much-needed 21st-century civil rights act for stupid people.” Hard to argue with this kind of presidential logic:
“To sustain this shining city on a hill,” Mr. Bush said, “we need to rescue the ignorant, irresponsible folks — from Wall Street to Capitol Hill to Main Street — who got us to where we are today. We must guarantee that no American suffers the soft bigotry of being forced to live with the consequences of his bad decisions.”
(Art via ABC. Unclear if the choice of a somewhat deer-in-the-headlights Chimpy shot was purposeful or not. He didn’t come across at all my-pet-goat live. In fact, he sounded like he intended to exert some leadership and was using the bully pulpit to signal that he knows it’s a big deal and is treating it as such. Part of that presidential multi-tasking thing Obama was talking about.)
NYT: President issues warning to Americans.
WASHINGTON — President Bush urged the American people and their lawmakers on Wednesday night to support his administration’s vast economic-recovery package, saying that a failure to do so could plunge the United States into “a long and painful recession.”
“Fellow citizens, we must not let this happen,” the president said in a speech from the White House.
Mr. Bush sought to rally the country in the kind of bipartisan effort he said was needed, not just to preserve American investment firms and big businesses but the savings and aspirations of millions of citizens in cities and on farms across the country.
“This rescue effort is not aimed at preserving any individual company or industry,” Mr. Bush said. “It is aimed at preserving America’s overall economy.”
The $700 billion plan his administration has put forth would normally be anathema to him, Mr. Bush said, because he typically would adhere to his philosophy that “companies that make bad decisions ought to be allowed to go out of business.”
But these are not normal times, he said, warning that without quick action, “America could slip into a financial panic.”
The president’s address, about 15 minutes long, was at once a plea for political action, an appeal to ordinary Americans that he understands their frustration and anger and a reaffirmation of his basic faith in capitalism.
…
Mr. Bush’s speech loomed as perhaps the most important of his presidency since the days immediately after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Moreover, the president and his speech-writers faced a delicate problem of tone: How to convey a sense of concern so as to muster support for the bailout program, yet not sound so pessimistic as to overly alarm millions of Americans and, perhaps, affect the markets.
Washington Post: Bush urges quick action by Congress.
“Our entire economy is in danger,” Bush said in the address from the White House, emphasizing that the massive bailout was not targeted just toward “one company” or even one financial sector. “It is aimed at preserving America’s overall economy.”
Warning that “America could slip into a financial panic,” Bush blamed the crisis on “easy credit” in the housing markets and urged Congress to act soon because the “widespread loss of confidence” in the financial sector could swarm all levels of the domestic economy.
“Given the situation we are facing, not passing a bill now would cost these Americans much more later,” he said, warning of job losses ranging in the millions.
Bush delivered the prime-time speech, his first in over a year, after a clamor on Capitol Hill for him to acknowledge the most serious financial crisis in decades and to personally make the case for the government intervention his administration has proposed.
The Hill: Paulson, Senate Dems reach tentative bailout deal.
Senate Democrats emerged from a meeting Wednesday with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to report a general, conceptual — but fragile — agreement on a $700 billion plan to rescue the U.S. financial markets.
Senators said Paulson and the Democrats struck very tentative deals on Democratic demands on oversight and transparency, executive pay limits, and equity interest on taxpayers’ behalf as part of the massive plan. A hard-fought Democratic provision to allow bankruptcy judges to revise mortgage terms was not likely to survive the horse-trading, however, as Paulson would not agree to the provision that is already in the House and Senate versions.
Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said a bill could be produced as early as Thursday, with debate and a vote likely over the weekend. Ideally, Durbin said the Senate would finish the bill before Wall Street opens on Monday.
“There is high anxiety about the opening of the markets on Monday,” Durbin said. “It’s good to have a deadline, and we have a deadline now, with the Jewish holiday and the opening of the market. Frankly, I want us to stick to that. If we start talking about another week or two, it will take another week or two.”
Senators cautioned that the package’s fragile framework could very easily fall apart as more specific definitions and details begin to be ironed out.
“We can have these broad agreements in principle, but it’s got to translate into details,” said Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). “And there’s a lot of work to be done.”
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:20 pm on Wednesday, September 24, 2008
3 Responses to “Dire Circumstances”
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September 24th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Lay and Skilling were indicted and tried for their roles in the Enron scandal. When will this be happening to the apparatchiks and former apparatchiks at FNMA/FHMC? (Yes, Jamie Gorelick, that means you.)
September 25th, 2008 at 8:44 am
There has to be an accountabiity. Of whomever is responsible.
Whether that be on Wall Street fat cats, mortgage company leaders, bankers, investors, mutual funds, academia, civil right leadership, or whomever, there has to be a placement of blame. And where appropriate restitution and jail sentences.
There also needs to be a reforming or restructuring of the system to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
I want that plan on my desk by 4 pm.
September 25th, 2008 at 10:39 am
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