on the bailout

[hermionesviolin]

Rep. Paul Kanjorski, (chair of the capital markets subcommittee of the House's Financial Services Committee) was on Squawk this morning [video link, summary piece (Politico)] and said the bailout bill was basically done (about 42-45 pages, most everything each side wanted is in there, there's broad agreement, if they work Saturday and Sunday they could have this bill ready for business on Monday) and said that the presence of the presidential candidates wasn't "disrupting" the process, but was slowing it down, said that they (the people writing the bill) know what they're doing, and that the candidates should go back and do what they're supposed to be doing.

So I laughed when I flipped over to CNN and Douglas Holtz-Eakin (McCain senior economic advisor) said that McCain was gonna go to Washington and help "jumpstart" the process.

[In blogreading today, edited to add this post from Daniel Drezner, dated yesterday.]

Selections from yesterday's blogreading:

Thought for the day [Megan McArdle, 24 Sep 2008 08:44 pm]

Isn't it marvelous how the financial crisis has been caused entirely by things that you were opposed to before the crisis happened?

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McCain asks for a time out [Megan McArdle, 24 Sep 2008 08:38 pm]

Allow me to pointout the obvious about John McCain's grandstanding declaration that he is suspending campaigning to deal with the financial crisis, and asking Barack Obama to cancel Friday's debate:

1. It is dumb. The world is not crying out for John McCain's exquisite financial acumen to help shepherd us through this.
   
2. It is politically brilliant. John McCain gets to polish his somewhat tarnished "above politics" image.
   
3. Democrats who are mad are mad because it is politically brilliant, not because it is dumb. There is, as far as I can see, no actual harm in postponing campaigning, or the debates; we can just as easily learn McCain's terrifying plans for the country next week.

It certainly doesn't make me like John McCain any better. But I don't really see how he's endangering the Republic either.

***

Obama has a short position in the market; when it goes down his vote total goes up. Moreover, he is doing what short traders often do, running a bear raid for over a year and one-half, by talking down the market and the economy ("Bush has messed up the economy...."). His high profile in the press aids the lack of confidence in the market by the millions which hear him daily, all of which helps the market sag making his position more valuable..
-Dale Oesterle [September 22, 2008]

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If it seems like I’m waffling on the merits of bailing out Wall Street, it’s because the facts keep changing.
-Prof. Stephen Bainbridge [Posted on Wednesday, September 24 2008]

***

I’m bemused at the way we’re perpetually told the fundamental cause of the ongoing meltdown is Wall Street “greed,” as though that somehow counted as an explanation. How, pray, would we describe it if mortgage lenders had rejected many more applications from lower-income folks, on the grounds that they were poor risks? Well, greed, of course. Pretty much whatever they did, they’d be doing because they expected it to maximize their profit; the issue is their judgement, not their motives. Or put another way: The problem isn’t that people were greedy, it’s that they weren’t very good at being greedy.
-Julian Sanchez [September 24th, 2008]