Tag: Wall Street

Embattled Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens may have caught a lot of flak for calling the Internet a "series of tubes," but House techies today used a tunnel analogy to explain how they will handle ever-increasing amounts of traffic from people looking to learn about their representatives online. Welcome to the 21st century, guys, it's pretty darn cool.

Read more of Jeff's commentaries: • Presidential slugfest hits the airwaves • By the numbers: Obama's got the edge • McCain's Southern-style 'mission accomplished'

WASHINGTON, D.C.—A day after watching the U.S. House of Representatives kill a $700 billion financial package as the stock market dropped more than 700 points, voters continued to vent their rage toward Washington. But fewer of them did than in the days preceding the vote, and more of them encouraged lawmakers to support the package—or simply to do something.

All of the political leaders blessed the deal, but the House of Representatives spit it out anyway. The Wall Street bailout is so odious to public opinion, the "people's house" rejected it, 228-205. The fever chart in Wall Street — better known as the stock market — swooned instantly, with the Dow falling 700 points. The political bedlam in Washington is as real as it gets.

Colorado's congressional delegation split along unusual lines Monday, voting 4-3 against a proposed $700 billion emergency plan to bail out the nation's troubled financial institutions. The House of Representatives rejected the bill 228-205, sending markets into a panic and ending the day with the largest dollar loss in Wall Street history.

As a result of the House Republicans refusal to get on board with an economic bailout package this afternoon, it’s back to the drawing board for the White House and divided U.S. lawmakers – including the Colorado delegation.

Sharpen your red pencils. The government transparency group, Public Markup.org, posted the full text of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 — otherwise known as the $700 billion blank check to Wall Street — to encourage public discussion sans pundits and politicos.

Like Congress as a whole, the Colorado delegation is divided on how best to right the nation’s shaky economy. But as Republicans and Democrats in Washington, D.C., belittled the Bush Administration’s $700 million bailout package Thursday as a request for a “blank check” from taxpayers, and bickered with each other about “core agreements” of an alternative to the Bush Administration’s economic bailout proposal, Colorado lawmakers took opposing stances on whether the government should intervene at all.

I just got a twitter alert from CNN that John McCain has suspended campaigning to work on the economy, and asked Barack Obama to postpone Friday's debate and do the same. Interesting request, considering McCain's top advisors helped get us into this mess. If he really wants to fix the economy McCain should start with some pruning of his own backyard.

Read more of Jeff's commentaries: • Love the Wall Street bailout? Try McCain on health insurance deregulation • Sarcasm on the campaign trail • Musgrave-Markey: Sticks and stones in CD 4 • It's the economy, stupid

Now-infamous philanthropist and investor Alberto Vilar’s fraud trial got under way in New York this week, even as Congress hotly debated a $700 billion bailout of the nation’s crumbling financial infrastructure and lawmakers balked at golden parachutes for bungling CEOs.

The good folks at PublicMarkup.org have placed the competing $700 billion mortgage bailout plans online to allow the public to read and comment on them while Congress considers its options in the midst of the greed-fueled nosedive of Wall Street.