The bills that make it through Congress are not always the best solutions to the nation’s problems from any one perspective, though they do represent hard-fought compromises among a variety of interests.
Among the plans for economic recovery that is only beginning to see the light of day is the “Nation’s Economic Cohabitation Act,” which [...]
TPMMuckracker published a nice summary of the collapse of AIG on Friday. If you’re interested in Congress’ role in creating the disaster, here’s a key line: “In 2000, Congress passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which further reduced the already weak regulation of derivatives like credit default swaps.”
Back in October, in a post called [...]
The Internets are seeing much ado today about some remarks Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made early this year on coal and greenhouse gasses. A snippet is in the video at right. (Ignore the red captions and exclamation marks – if you can!!!!)
Senator Obama describes a carbon cap-and-trade system pretty accurately. He concludes [...]
There were a lot of good reactions to yesterday’s post about candidates for federal office with responsibility for at least part of the financial crisis.
We listed House members and Senators who either voted for, or didn’t object to, a law freeing up financial services firms to offer these wagers known as “financial derivatives” [...]
In 2000, Congress passed a law barring states from regulating credit default swaps under their gambling and “bucket shop” laws. This set the stage for the market in “financial derivatives” that are a big part of what is causing the economic meltdown today.
One hundred fifty-five of the Members of Congress who voted for [...]
Yesterday, the House declined to go forward with the $700 billion financial services bailout put together by House and Senate leaders working with the Administration. The vote was 205 in favor and 228 opposed.
This is not the end of the bailout idea. Though it appears to be widely unpopular among the American people, [...]
[Update: New bailout text is here. Spending under the new language is likely to be roughly the same. See discussion here.]
The text of bailout legislation that might pass through Congress this coming week is circulating on the blogs (and reliable sources too . . .). I’ve taken it and done a little analysis, [...]
Reports have it that the U.S. federal government might spend $1 trillion bailing out financial services firms. That’s about $7,750 per U.S. family, or $2,500 per person.
That’s a net present value calculation – the amount of money you would have to put in an interest bearing account today to cover all future expenses. Running [...]
It’s hard to know what all the economic consequences of the taxes, spending, and regulation we report on here at WashingtonWatch.com might be, but here’s an investment fund that might be interesting to folks who are skeptical of it all. The Congressional Effect Fund Web site says:
43 years of empirical data demonstrates that [...]