Tuesday 30 September 2008

Twisted logic & distorted facts of the day

From the BBC:

"About two-thirds of Republican lawmakers refused to back the rescue package, as well as 95 [40% of] Democrats."

The Democrats have a 235-to-199 majority in the House of Rep's, they could have pushed this through on their own.

"President George W Bush is to make a statement on the deadlock over the bail-out plan early on Tuesday morning. But the president has been wholly ineffectual in the crisis so far and it's difficult to see how that might change, says the BBC's North America correspondent Justin Webb."

Right. So a Republican President proposes this legislation, does his best to railroad it through, but when it fails it's his fault, not the fault of the majority Democrat Party?

"The legislation has failed, the crisis has not gone away," said Nancy Pelosi, the house's Democratic speaker.

So she's the heroine of the hour, is she? The 'crisis', to the extent there is one, will go away the minute they remember the joys of the 'debt-for-equity-swap'.

H/t John Pickworth in comment to previous post.

2 comments:

Nick Drew said...

may be paranoia (& can't quite think why I might be paranoid just at this moment) but I felt BBC news coverage etc yesterday was a systematic disgrace: almost as if there was a Brown henchman at every editor's side

is it some wartime propaganda edict that has been revived for the occasion ? or does the Beeb just revert to this mode spontaneously, on a self-censorship basis ?

I really do detect that some edict went forth at 06:00 on Monday morning: convey at all times that (a) it's the Americans' fault; (b) Statesman Brown is doing all he can; and (c) the Tories and their silly conference are a trivial distraction

Anonymous said...

Evan Davis (normally more balanced than this) said this morning on R4 Today that it was a choice between bailout and oblivion.

Does anyone out there really miss Rover cars? Is the fact that we lost x% of our car suppliers really a problem? OK, maybe it had an effect on competition, that it perhaps meant that Toyota, Ford and Nissan didn't have to try so hard and could charge a little more. But it was hardly the end of the world.

So, why can't we let a few banks go to the wall? Let 'em die, and die quickly and get confidence back in the system.