House to Wall Street: Drop dead

Commentary: Uneasy Republicans couldn't stomach massive bailout

marketwatch.com

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - With a firm rejection of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the House Republicans have told the financial markets that they'll have to solve their problems on their own, without $700 billion of taxpayer money.

In a stunning vote on Monday, the House rejected the financial rescue package on a vote of 205 to 228. Republicans voted against the bill by a two-to-one ratio, and in the process rejected their own leadership, who had worked for nearly a week to craft a bill that could gain a majority. Nearly 100 Democrats also voted against the bill, spurning their leadership.

Many Republicans in the House were never persuaded that the credit crunch in the financial system is an impending disaster deserving of taxpayer aid. Politicians who had cut their teeth on free-market principles couldn't accept the idea that the federal government should back up the banks who had foolishly bet everything on the housing bubble.

Or they didn't want to face the voters in six weeks and explain why a Republican would vote for the biggest government bailout ever.

Now we shall see if Paulson and Bernanke were right when they said the credit crisis could worsen and inflict dire consequences on the global economy. Or perhaps the plan's many critics were right in saying that credit markets and home prices can adjust on their own, once the promise of free money is withdrawn.

The leaders in Congress and in the administration will undoubtedly try again, hoping to write a compromise bill that can attract a majority. But that won't be easy, because the Paulson plan had significant opposition from backbenchers on both the Republican right and the Democratic left.

Rejection of the plan means there's no political solution to this financial crisis on the horizon. As it now stands, the markets are on their own.

The next six weeks will tell whether the coup d'etat in the House on Monday has created a political crisis to match the financial one.

Dirty Secret Of The Bailout: Thirty-Two Words That None Dare Utter

September 22, 2008 02:06 PM Huffington Post

Read More: Bailout, Financial Crisis, Henry Paulson Wall Street, Paulson Bailout Package, Section 8, Politics News

A critical - and radical - component of the bailout package proposed by the Bush administration has thus far failed to garner the serious attention of anyone in the press. Section 8 (which ironically reminds one of the popular name of the portion of the 1937 Housing Act that paved the way for subsidized affordable housing ) of this legislation is just a single sentence of thirty-two words, but it represents a significant consolidation of power and an abdication of oversight authority that's so flat-out astounding that it ought to set one's hair on fire. It reads, in its entirety:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

In short, the so-called "mother of all bailouts," which will transfer $700 billion taxpayer dollars to purchase the distressed assets of several failed financial institutions, will be conducted in a manner unchallengeable by courts and ungovernable by the People's duly sworn representatives. All decision-making power will be consolidated into the Executive Branch - who, we remind you, will have the incentive to act upon this privilege as quickly as possible, before they leave office. The measure will run up the budget deficit by a significant amount, with no guarantee of recouping the outlay, and no fundamental means of holding those who fail to do so accountable.

Is this starting to sound familiar? Robert Kuttner cuts through much of the gloss in an article in today's American Prospect:

The deal proposed by Paulson is nothing short of outrageous. It includes no oversight of his own closed-door operations. It merely gives congressional blessing and funding to what he has already been doing, ad hoc. He plans to retain Wall Street firms as advisors to decide just how to cut deals to value and mop up Wall Street's dubious paper. There are to be no limits on executive compensation for the firms that get relief, and no equity share for the government in exchange for this massive infusion of capital. Both Obama and McCain have opposed the provision denying any judicial review of decisions made by Paulson -- a provision that evokes the Bush administration's suspension of normal constitutional safeguards in its conduct of foreign policy and national security. [...]

The differences between this proposed bailout and the three closest historical equivalents are immense. When the Reconstruction Finance Corporation of the 1930s pumped a total of $35 billion into U.S. corporations and financial institutions, there was close government supervision and quid pro quos at every step of the way. Much of the time, the RFC became a preferred shareholder, and often appointed board members. The Home Owners Loan Corporation, which eventually refinanced one in five mortgage loans, did not operate to bail out banks but to save homeowners. And the Resolution Trust Corporation of the 1980s, created to mop up the damage of the first speculative mortgage meltdown, the S&L collapse, did not pump in money to rescue bad investments; it sorted out good assets from bad after the fact, and made sure to purge bad executives as well as bad loans. And all three of these historic cases of public recapitalization were done without suspending judicial review.

Kuttner's opposition here is perhaps the strongest language I've seen used, pushing back on this piece of legislation, in any publication of repute, and even here, Section 8 is not cited by name or by content. McClatchy Newspapers also alludes to Section 8 with concern, citing the "unfettered authority" that Paulson would be granted, and noting that the "law also would preclude court review of steps Paulson might take, something Joshua Rosner, managing director of economic researcher Graham Fisher & Co. in New York, said could be used to mask previous illegal activity." Jack Balkin also gives the matter the sort of attention it deserves on his blog, Balkinization.

But elsewhere, the conversation is muted. The debate over whether Congress is going to pass the Paulson bailout package, or pass the Paulson bailout package really hard seems to have boiled down to a discussion of time and concessions. The White House has made it clear that they want this package passed yesterday. Congressional Democrats seem to be of different minds on the matter, with some pushing back hard, and others content to demand a small dollop of turd polish to make the package seem more aesthetically pleasing, at which point, they'll likely roll over and pass the bill. Neither candidate, John McCain or Barack Obama, seem all that amenable toward the bailout, but neither have either demonstrated that they are willing to risk their candidacies to do much more than exploit the issue for electoral purposes.

Sunday morning came and went, with Paulson traipsing dutifully from studio to studio, facing nary a question on Section 8. Front page articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal detail the wranglings, but make no mention of this section of the legislation. On TV, cable news networks are stuck in the fog of the ongoing presidential campaign.

Throughout the coverage, one catches a whiff of what seems like substantive pushback on this power grab, but it largely amounts to a facsimile of journalistic diligence. Most note, in general terms, that the bailout represents a set of "broad powers" that will be granted to the Department of the Treasury. Yet the coverage offsets these concerns through the constant hyping of the White House's overall message of "urgency."

But one cannot overstate this: Section 8 is a singularly transformative sentence of economic policy. It transfers a significant amount of power to the Executive Branch, while walling off any avenue for oversight, and offering no guarantees in return. And if the Democrats end up content with winning a few slight concessions, they risk not putting a stop-payment on the real "blank check" - the one in which they allow the erosion of their own powers.

Over in the Senate, Christopher Dodd has proposed a bailout legislation of his own, which critically calls for "an oversight board that not only includes the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the SEC, but congressionally appointed, non-governmental officials" and would require the President to appoint an "independent inspector general to investigate the Treasury asset program." In Dodd's legislation, Section 8 is effectively stripped from the bill.

Nevertheless, the fact that Section 8 of the Paulson plan seems to strike few as a de facto dealbreaker can and should astound. The failure of Congress to hold the line on this point would be truly embarrassing. But if we make it through this week with nobody in the press specifically informing the public about the implications of this single sentence - in the middle of a complicated bill, in the middle of a complicated time - then right there, you have the single largest media failure of this year.

Fed's Fisher says not certain inflation will ease

By Alister Bull

HOUSTON (Reuters) - U.S. economic growth is softening amid still fragile financial markets but it is not clear that this will curb inflation as hoped, a top Federal Reserve official said on Thursday.

"While it seems pretty clear that economic momentum is slowing, the jury is out on whether lesser momentum will be sufficient to translate into relief on the price front over the intermediate to longer term," Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher told a business luncheon.

"It is pretty clear that trend consumer price inflation has accelerated over the past few months," said Fisher, who has voted against interest rate cuts or in favor of monetary policy tightening at every Fed rate-setting meeting this year.

A stronger dollar and lower oil prices would appear to be taking some of the pressure off of import and energy costs, but Fisher said that it was too early to tell if this would help to bring down inflation.

"First of all, you don't know how long it will last," he told reporters after the speech.

"I do think it is 50/50 odds that the kind of pressures that we saw coming on the price front from these high commodity prices ... might well pass through the economy and not leave the stain of intermediate and long-term inflation. On the other hand, it might," Fisher said.

Despite Fisher's concern over inflation, the U.S. central bank is expected to hold benchmark overnight rates steady at 2 percent at its next policy meeting on Sept. 16.

The Fed halted an aggressive rate-cutting campaign this year after slashing borrowing costs by 3.25 percentage points to shield the economy from a collapsing housing market.

It has signaled it will be patient despite high inflation in waiting for growth to rebuild, based on an assessment that the weakened economy will cap price pressures.

Fisher made plain this outcome, or a less favorable situation where higher prices get embedded into expectations for inflation in the future, were far from certain.

"The jury is still very much out as to which scenario will obtain. The most recent inflation reports are not particularly encouraging," he said.

On the other hand, he was pretty downbeat on the economic outlook in his speech.

"Consumption expenditures, real capital expenditures and construction show the third quarter off to a weak start, although yesterday's manufacturing numbers were a nice surprise on the upside," he said. July factory orders rose a stronger than expected 1.3 percent, data released on Wednesday showed.

"I think it is very likely we will suffer anemic growth for the current and perhaps the next couple of quarters," he said.

He also said credit markets still had not recovered from their shock over massive subprime mortgage losses.

"I think substantial progress is being made. Without getting into specifics, I think still more has to be made, but we're in the process of healing. It is just, I think, going to take some time," he told reporters.

At the outset of his remarks, Fisher warned the audience that he would not comment on the presidential election. But he did have a warning for both Democratic hopeful Sen. Barack Obama and his Republican rival Sen. John McCain.

"If we want to keep growing the United States' share of the global market for services, we must resist the siren call of protectionism ... I hope both presidential candidates and both political parties will bear this in mind," he said.