Doing my own little part

[jducoeur]

There -- letter sent to Rep. Tierney. He turns out to be one of the Congressmen on the fence about the bailout, and seeing as how I'm one of his constituents now, and very strongly of the (minority) opinion that the bailout is ugly but necessary, it behooved me to add my own little weight to the pile of emails. Fortunately, the email systems seem to have gotten repaired since yesterday...

Comments

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

Ya know what's funny.

One of the major poll folks was on NPR yesterday and said we are not really in a big minority.

It is about split.

[jducoeur]

Yeah, as I listen to the news I get the impression that it's turning around. Last week, people were talking about the emails running 100-1 against, but I gather that the huge market lurches have started to concentrate minds a bit. And Congress is probably starting to realize that, if the bill really and truly dies, we're probably going to see a 2000-point plunge in the Dow, and nobody's going to be very happy about that...

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

Isn't there a curcuit breaker that would stop that.

Do the Asian markets trade tonight?

[jducoeur]

Isn't there a curcuit breaker that would stop that.

They can force people to pause and catch their breath if it's just the heat of the moment due to a sudden panic. (As in '87, when the underlying problem was enormously exacerbated by what amounted to a technical glitch.) But if people really want a sell-off, there's not much that can stop it, and my guess is that a total failure of the bailout would cause a huge sell-off, as everyone divested of anything connected to the questionable securities.

Things can muddle along for a *little* while, and I suspect the exact shape of the bailout doesn't matter hugely. But the markets desperately need reason to hope right now, before despair sets in and the credit markets seize up even more than they already have...