iheartirony.com to the House of Representatives: you should all be ashamed (meant UN-ironically, in case that was in doubt)

Something that I've pointed out conversationally several times over the course of the bailout dialogue has been that the question shouldn't be "can we afford it?" The question has to be "Can we afford not to do it?" This was evidenced in real terms by the Dow closing down nearly 800 points yesterday. Bailout = approximately $700 billion, with the possibility of getting some of that back. No bailout = $1.1 trillion in lost market value (taking into consideration Nasdaq and S&P losses). Of course, the market has rebounded a bit today, but don't think that means things are okay. That's just investors grabbing some (perceived?) deals and being optimistic that there might be another vote this week.

Don't get me wrong, the plan was far from ideal, but nearly every economist who looked at it said it was better than doing...Uh, or right... Nothing! Also, most economists seem to agree that the longer it takes to do something the more expensive it's going to get. LIBOR shot up yesterday and the TED spread is back up over 300 bps. If something isn't done soon we're going to see things a lot worse than the Sun going out of business. Give it 1-3 weeks and you're going to see a large company not be able to take out a short-term loan and whammo, they're going to miss payroll.

So, to the House of Representatives: shame on you. Shame, shame shame. You put your own ideologies and short-term political capital ahead of the economic health of every day Americans at a mind-boggling level. If you had angry constituents calling about bailing out bankers, maybe instead of capitulating you should have attempted to educate them.

Fools. This is all madness and history will lay it on your heads.