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Looking to the East
Well, it's been a fun couple of weeks on Wall Street, no? Was it really just a week ago that I blogged about the AIG fiasco?
There's plenty of blame to go around now for what could turn out to be, to borrow a phrase of Tom Brokaw's, the Greatest Depression. (What was so Great about the 1929 Depression, anyhow?) Depending on who's doing the talking, the fault for yesterday's failure to pass that $700 billion bailout can be attributed to the president's ongoing inability to convince anyone he's doing the right thing in any circumstance; to Nancy Pelosi's promise that new leadership in 2009 will solve these problems (yeesh, what a crackpot); or to the fact that the American public doesn't understand that the "bailout" is not, in fact, a bailout, but is an infusion of liquidity. (There; feel better?)
Personally, I don't think it helped when some Treasury Department spokeswoman told Forbes.com that the computing of the $700 billion sum was "not based on any particular data point. We just wanted to choose a really large number." What was that about new leadership again, Nancy?
Anyway, with all this sturm und drang going on, it's reasonable -- if not downright expected -- for companies to start panicking and burying their heads in the sand. But there's a glimmer of hope on the other side of the world, and it's the home of some 1.3 billion people.
