In a stunning turn of events, the House of Representatives failed to pass the “Emergency Economic Stability Act of 2008″, also known as the Bailout Bill.  This was a plan that was forged by two financial experts, the Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, who spent years on Wall Street and managed one of the biggest investment banks (still in business) Goldman Sachs, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke.  Now regardless of what anyone says, these two men run the U.S. Economy, not the President, so stop putting the blame on Bush.  Additionally, Paulson put out a framework to re-build the financial markets months ago and Congress side-stepped it.  So after a week of expanding a 3-page document to 109-page document with all of the features the Republicans and Democrats wanted, they failed to pass the bill.  Now what did this do?  It caused the Stock Market to fall in the greatest one day point drop in HISTORY!!!  Now ABC News put it very clearly…the bill was for $700 Billion dollars…the total amount lost due to the market drop was between $1.1 and 1.4 TRILLION DOLLARS!!!  And because Congress is on leave until Thursday (so much for 9-5 jobs or actually doing work for the people instead of this freakin’ campaigning) the markets have time to fret some more and lose more.  

Now I’m ready to place some blame: New Hampshire’s two House representatives, Carol Shea-Porter of the first district and Paul Hodes of the second district, both voted against the bill.  Now get this, Paul Hodes is on the Financial Services Committee whose leader Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts was one of the key sponsors and authors of the bill.  This is an embarassment unto itself but the thought that they couldn’t at least resolve their concerns with another key author, NH Senator Judd Gregg, is truly amazing.  Both of them should be recalled for ineptness or at least voted out in November.

Now there is discussion that says Congress was inundated with calls from Americans telling them not to vote for the bill.  What Americans do not understand is just how serious this problem is.  Just wait until tomorrow morning when they wake up to see the global markets falling as rapidly as the DJIA did today…Oh, it already is, the Hong Kong Hang Seng index opened down 5.5%.  As David Calloway of MarketWatch puts it, “Congress calls Wall Street’s bluff ,and we all lose our shirts.”

Overall, we needs to dissolve government: Congress and the White House.  We need experts not lawyers, we need real people not bureaucrats, we need them now!!!