Republicans short of votes, point fingers, have their feelings hurt by Nancy Pelosi

And allegedly, out of spite, voted against the bail out. Of course, Barney Frank offers them a hug and a kiss :

Give me those twelve people's names, and I will go talk uncharacteristically nicely to them, and tell them what wonderful people they are, and maybe they'll think about the country.

LOL!

That said, I still think this bill was a crock of horse effleurage. We the people of the United States deserve to be better informed about this fiasco. George Bush's 14 minutes on TV didn't do it. Paulson's screaming "the markets are falling" didn't do it. Certainly the non-answers I got from my Senators and US Congresswoman didn't help either --they seem to have been characteristic of most of Congress communication skills.

BTW : It seems the overwhelming reason that brought people together and against the bill was the haste with which is was being pushed. Well, Naked Capitalism is reporting that the haste is was bullshit. Paulson knew there was no haste with the markets :

1. The tranching is a mere formality, and the Treasury boys as much as said so. They could take the $700 billion max as soon as the bill has passed,

2. However, they do not plan any action immediately, will wait a couple of weeks. They want to focus their efforts on stronger companies but also made noise about protecting the financial system. This, by the way, is the Japanese convoy system all over.

3. There seemed to be a lot of tap dancing about what price they will pay for assets and no straight answer about their policy on warrants. They did say that if the amount sold was greater than $100 million, they would take warrants. FYI, the current draft allows them to pay up to the price at which the assets were initially booked (yikes) . I wonder if this is obfuscation, if they have an idea of what the plan to do but will not admit it in any public forum.

4. As the person who listened to the call stressed, DealBreaker wasn't clear on the bifurcated process. If you come to the Treasury and you are in trouble, you get reamed. Bear/AIG style treatment, execs probably fired. But if you participate on a voluntary basis, the intent is to make it very user friendly. That is consistent with Paulson's position during the negotiations.

5. The exec comp provisions sound like a joke, They DO NOT affect existing contracts, they affect only contracts entered into during the two years of the authority of this program and then affect only golden parachutes. More detail on that point, but I don't need more detail to get the drift of the gist.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Need a reason to go read the Naked Capitalism post? Yves Smith titled it "Mussolini-Style Corporatism in Action: Treasury Conference Call on Bailout Bill to Analysts".

The Republicans and Democrats who voted against the status quo may end up the heroes by calling Paulson's bluff.

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