View Article  UPDATE: MONDAY EVENING


When I drifted off to sleep this morning I wasn't expecting the House to vote down the credit market rescue bill, but that was the news I woke up to this afternoon.  I guess John McCain wasn't expecting it either.  Has anyone bothered to tell him that the deal on the bill has collapsed, or is he still out on the stump taking credit for putting it together?  Good work on that one, John!

This morning, I was worried that the market had fallen 300 points in half an hour.  It managed to fall nearly 500 more points while I was dozing. If you think it's hit bottom, I suspect you're still asleep and dreaming.



Of course you can't blame the House Republicans for voting 2-1 against the bill -- Nancy Pelosi was mean to them in a speech before the vote, right there on the House floor, in public.  It was like the most popular girl in high school (like, the homecoming queen or something) dissing them at assembly -- in front of everybody!  You could hardly expect them to be thinking clearly, or considering the welfare of the country, after something like that.  It's not like we're dealing with grown-ups here.

My friend PZ sends a line from an old pop song -- "They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday's just as bad."  I fear that Tuesday will in fact be much worse.

O. k., then -- bring on the big D.  I got the truck running and loaded up.  I hear there's opportunities in Mexico for folks who aren't afraid of a little hard work . . .
View Article  MONDAY MORNING


I'm writing this just after seven in the morning Pacific Time.  After working all night, I was getting set to go off to bed when I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach -- a sense that the bail-out bill crafted by the geniuses in Washington wasn't going to work, that the markets would feel the same way about it . . . and that the American economy was about to go under, suddenly, in one fell swoop, today.

I turned on the television and saw that the Dow Jones Average had plummeted three hundred points in less than half an hour.  I hope things won't continue in that vein, but I have a horrible premonition that they will.  If the House Of Representatives approves the bail-out bill in the next few hours and the market continues to fall, it means that Washington has waited too long -- dithering around for a John McCain photo-op and other exercises in political posturing and giving more banks time to fail, undermining investor confidence beyond repair.

As I head off to bed once again, I have a feeling that I might wake up in a world that has been utterly changed.

Boy, do I hope I'm wrong.