What Wall Street Hoped to Win

By PAM MARTENS

“I got a lot of Ph.D. types and smart people around me who come into the Oval Office and say, ‘Mr. President, here’s what’s on my mind.’ And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the device (sic), I decide, you know, I say, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’ And it’s ‘Yes, sir, Mr. President.’ And then we get after it, implement policy.”

-- President George W. Bush, October 3, 2007

Pity poor President Bush. He’s been pushed aside as The Decider. The Decider’s strut and press entourage, along with the coffers of the United States, were to be handed to Henry M. (Hank) Paulson, U.S. Treasury Secretary, who was to have sweeping authority to share newly augmented plunder with his cronies on Wall Street and set up a vast new bailout bureaucracy, all at taxpayer expense.

But, at last, the People’s House may be listening to the people. The House of Representatives voted yesterday to reject the bailout measure 228 to 205.