Deal on Bailout? Yeah, Sort Of

So they worked all weekend, those cabinet and congress people struggling to craft a bill to bail out the US economy. In the end, they gave Bush something to say at 7:35AM Eastern, when he addressed the nation on the need to get the bill through the House and Senate. It took him all of four minutes. Meanwhile, world markets don't seem impressed. Most are down, and a couple more banks have been nationalized.

The US bailout has been made to sound like the risk to taxpayers is minimal. It doles out up to $700 billion dollars in stages, $250 billion here, $100 billion there, the rest later. There is some help for homeowners facing foreclosure, but not too much (that would be socialism)! And all this, as best I can tell, to get banks to trust each other enough to lend each other money. Maybe it's a lot more complicated than that, but who knows?

Speaking of which, who knows if it will actually work? The House is expected to vote later today, but who knows whether the Republican block, which last I checked is a minority, will go along? Most of the fighting here has been GOP against GOP. That battle is almost as interesting as Obama vs. McCain.

Around the world, some nations are putting out harsh critiques of this peculiarly American financial mess. China has called for a new world economic order, one that's less dependent on the US. Their central bank ordered a halt to business with their US counterparts last week. Brazil's president says the bailout is for the rich, not the poor. Iran's Ahmadinejad, never one to miss an opportunity, slammed this country from the podium at the UN.

These are the real wages of greed. Those that got the country into this mess don't really care. Their salaries may be limited if the bill passes, but it won't make them miss a tee time at the country club. Real and imagined Masters of the Universe don't go out that easily.

Why? They've got us!