Failed Leadership and a Vote for the Next Great Depression

--Published on Monday, Sept. 29, 2008 at 03:40:49 PM EDT @ Daily Kos:

This afternoon both Democratic and Republican House leadership failed to guide the House to passage of a bill directed at keeping the U.S. financial/credit system from crashing. If anyone had any remaining doubts about the fundamental incompetence of both parties of the current Congress to address this Nation's urgent crisis, this absolute failure of leadership should remove all remaining doubts. The ship of state and the economy are headed toward the iceberg, and the captain does not even know how to steer.

This failure is due to the failed leadership of the White House and Congress, the continued partisanship of Pelosi and the Democratic caucus (who seemed more interested in praising each other for their development of this Bill, than they were in making sure it would pass), the ideological free market fundamentalism of many Republicans in the House, and the massive public misunderstanding of the meaning of this Bill for the immediate future of the US and global economy. And even now (3:15 pm) the Democratic House leadership (Pelosi and Frank) is making a terrible situation even worse by blaming the Republicans for this failure, without accepting their own share of the responsibility for this failure.

Those voting against this Bill, as well as much of the public, seem to be stuck in a terrible misunderstanding of the basic meaning of this Bill, reflected in the way it continues to be called a "Bailout of Wall Street," even though it is more accurately a Bill to keep the financial system from collapsing, and to keep money flowing so that paychecks, jobs, and retirement accounts don't freeze up along with the entire economy. The failure of this bill now threatens to sink "Main Street" along with Wall Street, as trust in the stability of the entire economy begins to collapse, bank failures proliferate, and even more people lose their jobs and homes.

What all those arguing against this Bill don't seem to understand is that by voting against the immediate action this Bill would have authorized, they may have voted for the beginning of the next Great Depression.

The entire global financial system is now on the brink of shutting down, and if it does, this financial meltdown may plunge the entire economy into depression.

If you don't understand this, you have not been paying attention to the financial and credit news. And if you are listening, and understand anything about how the financial crisis of 1929 quickly turned into the beginning of the Great Depression, you will understand why immediate action to keep the financial system from freezing up is necessary.

We can all complain about the unsavory aspects of this Bill as much as we want, but in the midst of an emergency--when the ship has hit an iceberg (as the US financial system and economy now have), and is sinking, the most immediate matter at hand is doing whatever is necessary, if possible, to keep the ship from sinking.

An emergency bill to keep the financial system functioning through November cannot be expected to solve all the problems that have been created by eight years of total governmental mismanagement by the Bush administration. This bill was simply intended to keep the ship from sinking, so that we would have time to begin working on the more needed repairs of restoring proper regulation and addressing the underlying economic issues that have put most Americans at risk.

I can only think that those voting and arguing against this Bill either don't understand it, or don't care whether many of us end up losing our paychecks, our savings, and our jobs. If the financial system stops functioning, we're all at risk, not just Wall Street. This is why the Financial Crisis of 1929 turned into the Great Depression.

This historic tragicomedy of failed political leadership and folly (in both parties), along with deep public misunderstanding and fundamental distrust, continues to grow, as the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 continues to play itself out....