September 20, 2008
Congressional Leaders Were Stunned by Warnings
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

WASHINGTON — It was a room full of people who rarely hold their tongues. But as the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, laid out the potentially devastating ramifications of the financial crisis before congressional leaders on Thursday night, there was a stunned silence at first.

Mr. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had made an urgent and unusual evening visit to Capitol Hill, and they were gathered around a conference table in the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“When you listened to him describe it you gulped," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.

As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program “Good Morning America”: “The congressional leaders were told “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally.”

Mr. Schumer added, “History was sort of hanging over it, like this was a moment.”

When Mr. Schumer described the meeting as “somber,” Mr. Dodd cut in. “Somber doesn’t begin to justify the words,” he said. “We have never heard language like this.”

“What you heard last evening,” he added, “is one of those rare moments, certainly rare in my experience here, is Democrats and Republicans deciding we need to work together quickly.”

Although Mr. Schumer, Mr. Dodd and other participants declined to repeat precisely what they were told by Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson, they said the two men described the financial system as effectively bound in a knot that was being pulled tighter and tighter by the day.

“You have the credit lines in America, which are the lifeblood of the economy, frozen.” Mr. Schumer said. “That hasn’t happened before. It’s a brave new world. You are in uncharted territory, but the one thing you do know is you can’t leave them frozen or the economy will just head south at a rapid rate.”

As he spoke, Mr. Schumer swooped his hand, to make the gesture of a plummeting bird. “You know we’d be lucky ...” he said as his voice trailed off. “Well, I’ll leave it at that.”

Congressional Leaders Were Stunned by Warnings - NYTimes.com

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Our great president GW Bush has bankrupted every company he has had his hands in.... What makes the USA any different??? And yes, it scares the hell out of me too

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Wonder if they'll show this on CSPAN or something. It would be interesting to hear, and to see some of the reactions. Scary stuff indeed.

read the history folks, It aint the president that makes these decisions.....

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Here's a solution to all the controversy over full-body scanners, searches, pat downs, etc. Have an appropriate booth that you can step into that will not X-ray you, but WILL detonate any explosive device you may have on you.

They get their wish and we get ours!

Max that's it to your room right now

Don't come out till you promise to drink the Kool Aide and stop post this truth I mean rubbish
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truth smoth, whateva

this too will pass

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Chlorine is my perfume. ~Author Unknown

No.

Unchecked GREED makes these decisions.

A Republican president who rubber stamped every GD thing a Republican congress sent him for 6 years made these decisions. One veto.

One veto. And that was over stem cell research.

And this is the result of what happened in the last year and a half? Nice.

We were bailing out the banks when W's daddy left in 1992.

We're bailing 'em out again now as W is on the way out.

Inherit a record surplus, leave with a record deficit.

These are the FACTS.

No opinion. FACTS.

Ignore them as you will. But at least own what you're voting for.

Less taxes and less regulation on business is good for America.

If we keep repeating it, it will become true. I'm sure of it.

I'm afraid that we are in such financial trouble now that either candidate who becomes POTUS will have to perform miracles to get us out of this mess. God bless whomever that unlucky guy is...

Reganomics is what save Clinton he was given the keys to a upswing in the U.S . Really look at his record all he really did was sit back and enjoy the ride. The bubble starting to go down when he was leaving office and that is what Bush had to contend with.

Lets look back Jimmy Carter screwed this country up royally . Regan comes in and fixes it. Clinton comes in and doesnt continue Reganomics the balloon starts to burst. Bush takes over but cant fix Clinton's screw ups.

Vote McCain to get it right

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Countdown until Obama leaves office



The Next POTUS

LOL...eight years to "fix" it......

LOL.......


where do I buy the tickets to see your comedy show live Frog????

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You know, fightin' in a basement offers a lot of difficulties.
Number one being, you're fightin' in a basement!

Rusty, I think you are 100% correct, unfortunately.

I've been on the fence, leaning Obama but not being able to vote against McCain, for awhile.

Now I'm convinced.

Why should someone else have to come in and clean up this mess?

If Obama gets elected, all of this shit...Iraq, the economy meltdown...that will all be the Democrats fault inside of 6 months after his election.

Now I'm sold. I'm voting the Republican straight ticket.

We can have McCain and Phil Gramm, who will become Treasury Secretary under McCain, have no illusions, in power.

Phil Gramm, the architect of half the deregulations that got us into this mess in the first place, will be our economic steward. John McCain will use the bully pulpit to further enflame international tensions. The costs of Iraq will finally come due, and all of us will see how much a Trillion dollars in borrowed spending really costs. Added to the trillion dollars in bailouts.

Inflation will be at 20%. The dollar will be worth...well...half a dollar.

And then, maybe then, we will cease to be fixated on one party over another party. Maybe then some common sense will come into play.

But you know what. 4 years from now, at the end of McCain's first term...I'll still be hearing about how the Democrat controlled congress was the cause of all of it for the 2 years they had power. Never mind that they had a slim majority and could never pass anything the President wouldn't sign.

It will still all somehow be Democrats fault.

The Dems are every bit as fucked up as the GOP. But my heavens...what does it take? What does it take to admit your party is on the wrong course with the wrong connections?

I'm voting for someone to take responsibility for what has happened. I'm voting Republican.

Well you can get in free

After Carter we had Regan for 8 yrs then Bush Sr for 4 so thats 12 yrs to fix Carters screw ups. We have had 8 yrs of Bush Jr and if we get McCain we will be back at 12 so then we will be good

Once again, the president did not cause it you know it and I know it. Everyone had a hand in it, and your a fool to think voting for obamma is gonna make it better. Just my opinion, but not everyone deserves to own a home.......I guess this crap proves it.

I don't think voting for anyone will make it better.

Hence, I'm voting Republican.

At least then, the other party can't take the blame.

And maybe then we'll all see that compromise and common sense should take the place over Feet-In-The-Concrete partisanship.

I’m not going to lay the blame for this at the feet of George W. Bush. Even had he vetoed some of the financial legislation, it would have done no good. First, the banking lobby had become so powerful that the Congress would have overridden any related vetoes.

Second, the truly damaging legislation—the stuff that segregated investment banking from commercial banking and completely deregulated the former—became law under Bill Clinton.

This country has lived on a growingly precarious speculative bubble and excessive consumer credit for two and a half decades. The bubble’s close to bursting.

Our United States Congress, both houses, has become nothing more than paid principals, acting on behalf of powerful lobbyists. The lobbyists pay them either to vote for legislation or to block it.

And, it isn’t even the bulk of them. Most of these dweebs do not even read the bills they vote on. It’s the same on both sides of the isle. Convenience and personal accommodation have become imperatives while truth and due-diligence have become options.

I wrote a column back in May of this year concerning tax increases. You can read it here if you want to. Twenty-six publications carried it and I received over 6,000 emails as a result.

I remain steadfast in those predictions. It will not matter who we elect, taxes in various forms are going to have to go up.

I wrote another one just a couple of weeks ago concerning the Sarah Palin VP nomination. In it, I included a section, A Pet Peeve of Mine, in which I outlined our current financial mess and how we arrived.

You can read it here if you’d like to. I received over 4,000 emails, but most pertained to Sarah's nomination as opposed to responding to the impending financial disaster.

It will not matter one bit which of the current presidential teams we elect. We’d better start calling the Congress to task. It’s a daunting undertaking.

The Congressional approval rating makes George W. Bush look like a flaming favorite son. It’s sitting on about 10% right now. However, the same people who think that Congress is doing such a terrible job think that THEIR particular representatives and senators are doing FINE jobs.

But, we’ll continue concentrating on important crap like McCain’s alleged claim to have invented the BlackBerry, whether Sarah Palin will continue to be a competent mother, the fact that Barack Obama’s middle name is Hussein, or myriad other totally irrelevant crap.

I’ve had it with all the bickering between the Neo-Cons and Liberal extremists—knuckle draggers all—who have nothing but self-interests at heart.

Regards,

Joe Walther

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Joe Walther
http://thetruefacts.blogharbor.com

Again, I totally agree JW....but tell us what to do!

I've had it.

Electing Joe W. as President will change nothing. He will state as much.

But forming a REAL third party, under Joe W.'s stewardship...COULD.

I'm in.

I've never volunteered for anything in my life politically. But I'd give up my free time to work for real change. With people who are truly 'Centrists'.

It's either a 3rd party willing to revamp the system, or a complete collapse of America.

Of this I'm sure.

Joe- I can always tell when yer boxers are on a bit tight, that being said I like your post, you are spot on when you say

" It’s the same on both sides of the isle. Convenience and personal accommodation have become imperatives while truth and due-diligence have become options."

thanks for defusing this situation here tonight, I fear it was only gonna get worse.

so I was right, it's a big shit sandwich, and we all get a bite.

Oh me too!!!! He'll win everybody's heart too.