So this time it passed, and it wasn’t even all that close (263-171). After turning down a $700 billion financial bailout plan on Monday, the House turned around and this afternoon approved an even more expensive one–loaded with tax cuts, an expansion of federal deposit insurance, and a now infamous tax exemption for certain toy wooden …

So now federal regulators are in a bit of a bind. If they let Wells Fargo ride in and snatch Wachovia out from under Citigroup, they get a better deal for taxpayers—an industry-on-industry solution with no government backstop.

But that might send a dangerous signal to the market. Setting aside the issue of whether or not a …

The House is expecting to vote on the big bailout (oh, sorry, rescue) bill around 12:30. Jay Newton-Small has a story up on TIME.com explaining that the fiscal-conservative Blue Dog Democrats in the House, who mostly supported the bill on its first go round but are ticked off at all the junk the Senate added to it, may be crucial to its …

Can we stop saying now that financial troubles “might” tip us into a recession? As this morning’s employment numbers (and a lot of other data in recent days) make clear, we’re in a recession. I’m still betting that the arbiters of such things will eventually decide we’ve been in a weird, mild recessiony kind of thing since last fall. Now …

In a fascinating turn of events that we’ll surely all learn more about over the course of the next few days, Wells Fargo–which had been about to buy Wachovia a week ago and then backed down, forcing the FDIC to bankroll a shotgun acquisition by Citigroup–changed its mind and agreed to pay $15 billion for the giant bank.

This time the …

There was a reader Q&A this Wednesday morning on the Washington Post site with business columnist Steven Pearlstein, who won a Pulitzer for his 2007 coverage of the financial crisis and has continued to write great stuff (via Romenesko). I link to it mainly because I’m getting asked more questions these days than I can ever answer, so …

A bunch of value investors got together at Columbia University today for the annual celebration of Graham and Dodd—those Columbia B school profs who wrote the 1934 tome Security Analysis and inspired generations of investors (Warren Buffet among them) with the philosophy that the way to make money is to buy good companies on the cheap …

Regular readers of this blog are aware that I’m extremely dubious of the argument that the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated banks from securities firms, is to blame for today’s financial crisis. But it keeps coming up, so let me try to smack it down again.

First, I think it’s fair to say that 90% of the people who …

The Paul Wellstone Emergency Economic Stabilization and Non-Laminated Wooden Arrow Excise Tax Exemption Act of 2008, or PWEESNLWAETEA, just rolled through the Senate with only token opposition. The Senate and House, man. They’re on the same hill, but they sure don’t have much in common.

Update: Final vote, 74-25.

The politicians in Washington, especially the Republicans in Washington, are all fired up at the moment about the scourge that is mark-to-market accounting. The bailout legislation approved by the Senate Wednesday night to be considered by the Senate tonight merely tells the SEC chairman that he has the authority to suspend …

Today the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released lender guidelines for the new Hope for Homeowners program that was included in the housing bailout bill Congress passed in July.

If you’re struggling with mortgage payments, it’s definitely something you should ask your servicer—or a housing counselor—about. The …