Let the Storm Pass
Update #2: I have a better metaphor for this. Let the storm pass. I wrote about that here.
Update: Nancy Pelosi is on TV right now and she’s blaming Republicans. But something like 95 Democrats voted “nay.”
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News just broke that the House of Representatives voted 228-205 in favor of the Nays on the Big Bailout. You can see when the announcement happened by looking at that spike on the Dow chart today, around 2pm.
As I write this, the Dow is down about 525 points, about 5%. Some people feared it would be more like 20-30%.
I say, let it burn. Failure teaches some of life’s most valuable lessons, and $700 billion is a steep price to pay for short-term security that might not even help us long term (so says Ron Paul).
The whole point of a free economy is that it corrects itself. The bailout is an attempt to buy our way out of the negative consequences of lots of dumb loans and artificially high prices.
By the way, Democrats: if you liked this Bailout, your Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, made a dumb move by blasting Bush economics before the vote:
Democrats were using this bailout to tack on more big money additions, just like they did with the economic stimulus (how’d that work out, by the way? I didn’t want that, either).
People are freaking out. Relax!
The strength of the economy isn’t the American government. It’s the American people.