What really needs to happen in Washington

It ain’t pretty. Without allowing Congressional and Senate egomaniacs (many with squaliformes money falling out of their pockets) to put their imprimaturs on it there wasn’t a chance Paulsen’s proposal would wind up as law. And as noted earlier, it had all kinds of truck-sized holes in in.

Hell, if Ol’ Bean sent them the world’s greatest barbeque rib recipe we’d wind up with fourteen platters of mystery meat and avocado-mint ice cream to dip it in.

And there are lots and lots of news media people digging up lots and lots of economists to try and find something to say about all this. Therein lies the problem – economists. As I have told people before, economists are not scientists because economics is not a science at all. It’s a bastard child of statistics and social studies. Some really smart economists will be right some of the time. A gorilla throwing rotted fruit at zoo patrons may even hit someone, too. (Mainly because they both get plenty of chances.)

Richard Shelby (R. AL) even trotted out a list of eminent economists who apparently signed a letter that said the bailout was a bad idea. Most, if not all of them are professors at institutions of higher learning. I noted at least one Nobel Laureate. Shelby, of course, was the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs until the Democrats took power and he’s now the Ranking Member. There’s plenty of blame for this debacle that can be assigned to that Committee and now he’s trying to make it look like he’s against helping the squaliformes out of this predicament. It’s their predicament and they’re making it our predicament.

And they have them and us by the you-know-whats. The squaliformes have enough blatant leverage in Washington to literally force the hand of Congress and the Senate. Toss in some political intrigue in the last few weeks of the election cycle and interestingly enough, some of them are more worried about being reelected than they are about attempting to solve the immediate problem.

It will be a squaliforme win. Trust me. There will be fewer of them but the remaining ones will thrive. They always do. And we really don’t have a choice. They will sit on their money and simply refuse to lend it to anyone until Washington gets back in line. And if Washington doesn’t do something, it’s going to get really ugly out here; segments of the economy that have remained untouched by the predatory lending and securitization craze will begin to feel the effect of the squaliformes strangling of the credit market to get their way.

This quid-pro-quo will cost us $700B. If it was handled correctly, we could get some of that back. But then we need to clean house in Washington so they don’t get to come back and do it all again. Any member of Congress or the Senate who has served on the committees that were responsible for financial services legislation needs to do the honorable thing and resign.

The Honorable Judge Roy Bean