President Bush looked awfully uncomfortable tonight. I don’t know if it was discomfort with the particulars of the financial bailout legislation he found himself having to promote, discomfort with now finding himself the third most powerful person (after Dick Cheney and Hank Paulson) in his own Administration, discomfort with having to give a speech on [...]

Today it’s the House’s turn to ask Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke questions about the $700 billion bailout plan. The House is usually more populist than the Senate, but I imagine today will be especially lively, considering that everyone is up for re-election in six weeks. Congressmen will start making their statements at noon, but [...]

Home sales are down, after an uptick in July. From the National Association of Realtors: Nationally, existing-home sales–including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops–declined 2.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.91 million units in August from an upwardly revised pace of 5.02 million in July, but are 10.7 percent below the 5.50 million-unit [...]

Nouriel Roubini thinks hedge funds are toast. A friend of mine in the business e-mails a different view: RE: MS and GS becoming banks and the SEC’s role: the SEC, if it has not permanently discredited itself w/ lack of action (perhaps not wholly its fault), may get a new lease on life by regulating [...]

In the comments sections, WilliamBanzai7 shares with us his latest subprime-debacle-inspired poem. The creative-writing major in me thought it worth a full post. TARP, you’ll keep in mind, stands for Troubled Asset Relief Plan–what we heretofore have referred to as “the $700 billion bailout.” Charge of the TARP Brigade (inspired by Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Charge [...]