Bailouts For Everyone!
The monster $700 billion plan to fix America's broken credit markets passed the senate by a wide 74-25 margin and is set for a House vote by the end of the week. How was the reviled, once-vanquished bailout resurrected? By becoming more bailout-ey! The federal government will still spend most of the money taking distressed mortgages off the books of poor, sad Wall Street firms like Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup. But also, as we mentioned before the vote, everyone with insurance now gets therapy and meds! The upper middle class gets an adjustment to the Alternative Minimum Tax. Corporations get a tax break for "research." Oh, and also, no big deal but probably companies don't have to play by basic accounting rules anymore (search for "mark to market" here). But the bailout became less bailout-ey in one regard: In the lead of the Wall Street Journal story (bottom example above), it's called a "rescue," the nomenclature preferred by the Bush administration. In the Times it's still a bailout. And what do you know, the papers have sharply diverging editorials (the Journal quotes Alexander Hamilton!) to go along with their positions.