The Big Bailout Bill dies in the House

The voting just finished up and The Big Bailout Bill has died, 205 for passage and 228 against with a simple majority needed. As I have said before, this will not mean the end of the world. All it means is that the Federal Reserve and Treasury will simply be doing a lot more ad hoc, one-off interventions, as well as some ad hoc congressional bills tailored to narrow proposals.

I personally am not terribly surprised or disappointed that the bill failed, although I would have preferred that it had passed.

Back in 1999, I wished that the Fed had not intervened and that we had gone "cold turkey" and really cleaned up a lot of the lingering mess that may in fact have come back to haunt us. On the other hand, there are a lot of normal people who might not like the level of pain that can follow a full-blown "turkey freeze."

I am sure that we will muddle through the current crisis, but it is unfortunate that we do it with an unnecessary level of pain and "chaos."

Maybe the joint strategies are that the Democrats will be able to claim that they acted responsibly and the Republicans will be able to say that they voted against Bush.

-- Jack Krupansky