What will be the effect of passage of the bailout?

[El Pinko]

What will be the effect of passage of the bailout?

[Uben]

1. I'm expecting a mule and twenty acres

.....or maybe nothing

[Two Americas]

2. amazing isn't it?

People can see through the "experts differ" bullshit on global warming, and the "experts differ" bullshit on creationism without thinking they need to be scientists to understand it, but somehow buy that "experts differ" bullshit when it comes to the economy.

Does it ever occur to people that the reason they think they don't know anything about the economy is because those who are fleecing us, and their sycophants - including many Democrats! - are lying to us and intentionally confusing us?

[cloudythescribbler]

3. At least we should be able to answer "other"

I would say a lot depends. It could stave off a crisis, and then if Obama gets elected, make it possible for some real reforms. If McCain gets elected (or more likely "elected"), buy futures in oil and gas, 'cause his policies will make their prices skyrocket, if Bush hasn't eg started a war w/Iran in his closing days already.

We MAY be in for a massive economic crisis either way, but there's no way of knowing looking forward in time whether it is too late for the urgently needed reforms or not, or how the politics of them will play out.

[HamdenRice]

4. The US was on target to extinguish the federal debt after the S&L crisis/bailout

At the time the S&L bailout seemed like an insurmountable cost. After the republicans had completely screwed up the economy, the adults were put in charge again, and within six years, the country had effectively zero unemployment, and was gathering suprluses, and was on target to pay off all the federal debt -- debt that had accrued and been with us through the Reagan years, Vietnam, Korea, WWI and II, the Civil War and Revolution.

Despite NAFTA, the US was exporting highly fabricated steel and other high tech industrial products. Imagine that -- the US had resumed its role as a leading exporter of manufactured goods after being "hollowed out" during the Regean/Bush the First years.

The 2000 debates were about what to do with all those hundreds of billions and billions and billions of surpluses.

If we are lucky, this buys us enough time until inauguration 2009 when hopefully the adults will be in charge again. By the middle of the second Obama term, with the war over, the military shrunk, the bailout paid down or returning profits to the treasury, a new green energy technology taking off in unimaginable ways (remember the internet didn't exist as a mass medium at Clinton's inauguration, and by 2000 it was ubiquitous), we'll be pretty much where Clinton left us.

At that point the republicans will be scheming how to take over and blow it all over again, and we'll probably be dumb enough to let them.

Frankly, making good economic policy isn't rocket science -- at least not at the political level (although implementing it at Treasury and Fed pretty much is). It's only hard when you want to fuck it up, which is what republicans basically want, because they don't want "economic policy," they want "looting."