I thought the stock market would be up 300 points by now, just

[Raven]

on the anticipation of the passage of this bailout. Maybe the fact that it is down, but not crashing, means that Congress really does have the time to think this thing through. At this point it appears that we don't have a gun to our heads.

[Junkdrawer]

1. Don't forget the dog...

[Warpy]

2. They made the mistake of announcing it late in the week

giving Congress time to take a good look at it and their constituents time to leave phone and email messages.

I guess this was the new product they decided to introduce this September, a shiny final asset stripping to present to Wall Street, after which the economy can go ahead and collapse completely because it'll be on somebody else's watch.

After all, everybody knows Magoo is senile and doesn't have what it takes upstairs to do anything to forestall it. If Obama is in, well, of course it's going to collapse on top of a Democrat! And a BLACK one as well! Democrats always foul everything up!

Alas, Congress has now had three days to think about it and their staff is starting to report that the emails are not happy ones.

If they do nothing, it might collapse before election day. If they do the wrong thing--the Paulson giveaway--it'll collapse after election day. If Congress catches a clue and ties the bailout to demand side economics and financial reform, it might not collapse at all.