>>>>>Where can I get information on who actually wrote/proposed the bill? Was it indeed written by the democrats? I have somebody telling me that the Republican Secretary of the Treasury wrote it.
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>>>>He did. Here is a link --
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>>>>The Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., who was the main architect of the financial rescue plan, said he would continue to work with Congressional leaders “to find a way forward to pass a comprehensive plan to stabilize our financial system and protect the American people.” He added, “This is much too important to simply let fail.”
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>>>Yes, I found that. However, I also read an enlightening post by Edward Pikeman about how bills are proposed to legislators. I also found that Paulson drafted the bill, proposed it to the Congress leaders, who further modified the bill before it was proposed to Congress. To me, that's the point where the dems took ownership of the bill. Again, I didn't mean for this to get into a political debate - I strictly was looking for information.
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>>Ed is a very smart guy, and probably as financially astute as anyone here, but he is dead wrong about this. Just because Congress passes a bill doesn't mean it was their idea. This was the administration's proposal, most specifically Paulson's. The fact that his initial proposal was tweaked by Congress (BOTH parties) before being voted on doesn't make it a Democratic bill. It's really beside the point to get lost in debates about which party "really" defeated it in the House. There's a lot of political cover going on there and it distracts from the real need to do something instead of fiddling while Rome burns.
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>Mike, unless you know anything specific about 'something' that needs to be done, i.e. unless you are making informed choice, stories about fiddling while Rome burns are just empty words, i.e. they may easily qualify for the 'fiddling'. What if this bill will make situation worse? What are you going to do in this case? Will you blame other guys or yourself?
>As it stands now 'experts', whom you seemingly believe, say that without this bill US economy goes to recession. This bill changes, imho, US economics in fundamental way, i.e. its consequences will be felt longer than any recession may continue. I think that these fundamental changes are negative ones, so I am willing to risk recession (i.e. taking expert words at face value) but preserving economic fundamentals. I think you are due to explain what you like in this bill in specific terms without general talk about something that has to be done to save Rome.

You're right that a bailout bill could make matters worse. This is an unprecedented financial situation, at least since the early 1930s, and I think anyone who offers guarantees of success is blowing wind. What needs to happen, one way or another, is the market has to be stabilized. Specifically, some mechanism needs to be found to put some sort of reasonable value on all these wacky securities that nobody knows how to value. We can't go on having huge financial institutions disappear one after another. We can't go on with the market going up or down hundreds of points every day. If we need to take a national writedown, for lack of a better phrase, let's take it and get it over with.

I am not as against the free market as you seem to think. I am as uncomfortable with the federal government being an ongoing player as you are. But I think when the market has failed as badly as it has at the moment, government needs to step in. Hopefully for a fix and not a fundamental, permanent role.

Not sure if that's as specific as you wanted but it's as straight as I can say it.