The Paulson Panic and the Failure of Politics (and Nerves)

Well, with the collapse of the Paulson plan in DC yesterday and the stock market free-fall of 700 points, apparently it's financial Armageddon according to breathless reporters/panic-mongers. Even the Financial Times has lost its cool; it organizes all its reports now under the label "Global Financial Crisis." Seriously. A little incendiary, don't you think?

Will everybody please calm down and work the problem? Running around screaming isn't going to help. Especially when the people doing the running and screaming are supposed to be the media-and-political elite. If the situation weren't so grim, this farcical "leadership" and "journalism" would provoke gales of heckling and hysterical laughter from an angry, weary, skeptical, and increasingly hostile citizenry. This current Congress has an approval rating in the teens. It's obvious why.

I think it's also time for MM Blog to take off its gloves and ladle some contempt and disgust on Congress. From the total failure of leadership by the disastrous Nancy Pelosi to the complete inability of the entire Washington club to find real solutions for real problems (including the problems that they've created themselves), the whole episode has been a catalog of cascading failures. Shame! As for the Paulson plan, there were plenty of things desperately wrong with it. (Among them: the failure even to explain it adequately.)

Take a look at this. Everybody in the political class gets a well-deserved tonguelashing--Democrats and Republicans alike. Blurb:

America has survived a feckless political class in the past, and it will again after this week. But Monday's crash and burn of the Paulson plan on Capitol Hill reveals a Washington elite that has earned every bit of the disdain that Americans have for it. This crowd can't even make sausage.

Oh, snap!

So, what to do, what to do? Should I turn hard-core survivalist? Maybe I should get off my laptop so I can go build a bunker, and fill it with bottled water, canned goods, ammunition, and appropriate movies. It's Armageddon! Funny, I always thought Armageddon would have more hellfire and brimstone than smelly mortgages and smellier leadership. *snort of derision*

UPDATE: Look at this takedown:

Above all, though, this is a failure of politics. Like with global warming, with health care, with the national debt, with immigration. It is further proof that we have a calcified political system incapable of responding to either long-term threats or short-term crises. The electoral and partisan incentives have made actual action too dangerous and rendered obstruction everyone's easy second choice.