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Around 12:30 a.m. Sunday morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the fundamentals of a deal between House and Senate leaders and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to stave off financial collapse on Wall Street after a week of frenzied Hill wrangling. Declaring the $700 billion bailout plan "a way to insulate Main Street and everyday Americans from the crisis on Wall Street," Pelosi unveiled the deal with House Republican Whip Roy Blunt and the ranking Republican from the Senate banking committee, Judd Gregg, as well as Paulson and other Democratic leaders...
...drama over the last week - John McCain's theatrical but ultimately unhelpful return to Washington, the anti-Socialist rants of House Republicans, the political maneuvering by Nancy Pelosi - the deal comes as something of an anticlimax. The market had already priced in the deal all last week, ignoring the Hill's histrionics, and Paulson and Bush were always adamant they were going to get a deal. So what did all the drama actually produce...
That said, judging from details provided by staffers and reports in the media, Congress did make a difference. To the three-page outline Paulson delivered over a week ago, the Hill added provisions to help American homeowners avoid foreclosure by reducing principals or interest rates and giving people more time to pay back their mortgage. Congress also got a guarantee that taxpayers will get their $700 billion back, and ensured Congressional oversight and transparency of Paulson's transactions. Politically, Congress covered itself somewhat by mandating a limit on executive pay for firms that tap the government's $700 billion...
That is only one element of the tricky undertaking that begins now for Paulson. For all the equity markets' sanguine response to the Hill, the credit markets are still seizing up. The process by which Paulson will actually use the $700 billion to buy the bad loans remains more than opaque. Sources familiar with his plans say he intends to structure some kind of reverse auction, where holders of the loans compete for the pool of money, pricing their loans as low as they can to still survive. But a slew of academic experts in auction theory have...
...Penthouse at Hilles murmured anxiously when the candidates were asked about the $700 billion bailout plan currently being debated on Capitol Hill...