Bail-out Photo Op

There are watershed moments in history that sometimes are not appreciated until much later. Was that what this White House meeting was yesterday (9-25-08) or merely an illustration of the farce that has become governance in this country?

George Bush, hapless defender of "The fundamentals are all OK", ignorant or uninterested in the state of the economy and counting the days until he can go home and play on his make believe ranch, convened a meeting to solve the "really really big problem". The idea was to put together congressional Democrat and Republican "leaders" and get them to back Treasury Secretary Henry "Why-is-he-not-in-jail" Paulson's scheme to address the crisis by paying off the banker - criminal class to the tune of $700 billion. It was a laughable proposal from the start, structured without any congressional oversight, as if that would even amount to anything. Even more laughable then, this stupid White House Conference with its Last Supper like photo opportunity. George Bush played Jesus Christ sitting in the middle of his table surrounded by his Democratic and Republican apostles. Among these disciples of course, were John McCain and Barak Obama. A day earlier McCain had made a dramatic announcement that he was "suspending his campaign" - for a couple days - in order to rush back to "the nation's capital" to help broker a deal. Obama, pointing out that this might be the best and not the worst time for the scheduled televised debate to go ahead, was nevertheless himself obliged to answer the summons of El Presidente and showed up like a school boy who hadn't studied his lesson to the conference. At least he didn't stir up trouble.

Late in the afternoon I started hearing BBC and other postings reporting that the meeting had not gone well and that the "restructuring deal" was on hold. Low and behold, it emerged that a block of House Republicans were stalling the deal - the right move for some of the wrong reasons - and that none other than John McCain was being coy about where he stood in regard to the renegades of his own party. By nightfall, it was widely believed by the Democrats that the whole thing was a ploy by Bush and McCain to create a problem on Thursday that the Republican nominee could "fix" on Friday. It didn't work. Talks completely collapsed and the conference turned into a literal shouting match, according to even the corporate reporting outlets.

Meanwhile, Washington Mutual went down. It's assets go in a government forced sale to none other than JP Morgan bank. (Imagine working for an outfit named for such a criminal!) This is the same bank that got to Lehman Brothers assets, am I right? Doubtless they are a little nervous at having received this "gift". A lot is being said about this being the biggest bank failure in US history and all it's implications for the savings and loan "industry" and the credit markets in general. But from our point of view here on the left coast, this was the last major financial institution headquartered in the Pacific Northwest. We are now entirely a colony.