The Senate plans to vote this evening on a slightly modified version of the Plan. Articles reporting on this possibility include:
Joseph Stiglitz weighs in on the initial failure of the bailout Plan (via Naked Capitalism): "A sad day for Wall Street, but it may be a glorious day for democracy." His hope:
…Congress will now devise a plan that is not based on trickle-down economics. A plan that identifies the real sources of the problem and does something about them - a real stimulus to the economy, a real programme to stem the flood of foreclosures, and a transparent programme for filling the holes in bank balance sheets. A plan that assures US taxpayers the costs will be borne by those who created the problem. Accountability means paying for the full consequences for one's actions — and the financial system has much to account for.
Der Spiegel displays a bit — a lot! — of Schadenfreude in this report even though the authors believes the sentiment "is out of place":
This is no longer the muscular and arrogant United States the world knows, the superpower that sets the rules for everyone else and that consid
ers its way of thinking and doing business to be the only road to success.
A new America is on display, a country that no longer trusts its old values and its elites even less: the politicians, who failed to see the problems on the horizon, and the economic leaders, who tried to sell a fictitious world of prosperity to Americans.
Also on display is the end of arrogance. The Americans are now paying the price for their pride.
Yet complacency rules in Washington. Glen Ford, writing in CounterPunch and Black Agenda Report, observes
Never has Republican-Democratic co-subservience to finance capital been on such naked display [as it has been over this last week]. But then, "We the People" have never before been witness to the terminal unraveling of late-stage global finance capital.
One might expect that, when facing the demise of all they consider proper, America's political caste would manage something better than to cling to the legs of its paymaster. And yet....
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