Capital Commerce

Paulson, Bernanke and the Road Through Bailout Hell

By James Pethokoukis

Posted: September 26, 2008

Why are we still wondering about the status of the Mother of All Bailouts—a full week after the financial world was supposed to end—if it didn't happen? Well, maybe Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke need to listen to more country music. As the lyrics to a hit from a couple of years ago say, "If you're going through hell, keep on going.... You might get out before the devil even knows you're there."

Clearly, those guys, as well as President Bush, should have moved even faster and harder on all this. Now the "freak show" of lobbyists, pundits, bloggers, media, and interest groups have caught up to them. Maybe the key error was not having the president address the country last Friday with a fire-and-brimstone, wrath-of-God speech about what would happen to the economy if a bill was not passed almost immediately. And he should have used the D-word not just the R-word when painting his scary picture. He didn't and here we are.

country music

It is nice to see one of the media elites actually knows something about country music. As opposed to the clueless CNN team that did not know that the DNC convention ended with a Brooks & Dunn country song.

Joe of NY @ Sep 29, 2008 16:04:53 PM

I'll second that

No one has stepped up and taken responsibility for this.

And who was the genius who invited the pres. campaign circus to set up in the midst of the negotiations?

James of NC @ Sep 26, 2008 10:26:22 AM

Who's we?

They created the mess.

How about they being responsible, liable and stop passing the buck along to us?

Now that would be real change in Washington and Wall Street!

HillbillyBill of TN @ Sep 26, 2008 09:45:18 AM

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Capital Commerce

Capital Commerce

U.S. News business reporter Matthew Bandyk examines the issues, people, and debates that shape the nexus of political and economic life in the nation's capital.

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