Looks like everyone is taking a wait and see attitude on the bailout. Paulson and the Fed want it right now, the dems want to attach pork and run for cover as to who really allowed this mess to happen. My small brain says they all are guilty- The Clinton administration and a willing Congress (both Republican and Democrat) wanted to buy votes by giving away mortgages to people that had no business owning a home. The Bush administration made some feeble, half-hearted attempts to sound the warning bell. McCain did have a pretty long track record pointing out that this was a house of cards.
It's hard when you live and die by your reelection campaign funds to actually do the right thing. When Frankling Raines comes calling throwing money at your campaign coffers to leave things as they are, it is hard to see reality through the $$'s. The mortgage companies didn't like all the risk so they ginned up some fake collateralized securities that Wall Street then leveraged to the max. Still no one really looked to hard at how these crappy pieces of paper had permeated the world economy.
So now instead of a $200B bailout of all these bad mortgages, we have a bailout of highly leveraged investment banks and one huge insurance company that will cost probably $2T when its all done. I say let the markets do their job and not have 'Atlas Shrugged'-like government intervention into banks telling them who they must lend to regardless of their creditworthiness.
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