more than Reid--Hoyer's sole job is to corral Democratic Reps and keep them in line.

if they'd rather make the bill even worse by making it more amenable to Republicans (which means tax cuts for the rich and less regulations), then they're absolutely useless and shouldn't be there.

Dems to vote as they saw fit. Which many of them did. She had been told by Boehner there were sufficient Repub votes to allow Dems to do that.

It was not a whip failure on the Dem side--the whip failure (if indeed it was a failure?) was on the Repub side.

Expect to see more of that. The Dems are starting to completely assimilate GOP strategies and their caucus apparently. Dems have justified a lot of bad sh*t supporting Obama already and its always easier to sell out your integrity when you've already done it once before.

Be on the look out for more and more snow storms in Hades. That's the fundamental ideology of bi/post-partisanship.

some suggestions for doing it right.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been promised that 80 or 90 Republicans would vote for the bill. That way, both parties could share responsibility. But in the end, just 66 Republican votes materialized.

According to my sources, once Pelosi learned of the double-cross, she told the Democratic whips to make it a conscience vote on the Democratic side as well. With the likelihood of voter indignation and the strong possibility that this bill would not fix what was broken, Pelosi was not prepared to make this primarily a Democratic bill. Knowing that the Republicans were walking away from the deal, she held the roll-call anyway, to make clear just whose failure this was.

When the vote came up short, she held it open a few minutes but made rounding up additional supporters the Republicans' problem. When the votes did not materialize, she banged the gavel, and the bill went down.

His suggestions:

The Democrats should write a bill that includes:

--An RFC-style agency to have the government take over or take major equity positions in failing banks.
--Direct refinancing of threatened mortgages, on the model of Roosevelt's Home Owners Loan Corporation.
--Extension of FDIC guarantees -- and standards -- to other financial institutions, with government takeover if they fail.
--A small transfer tax on financial trades to pay for a lot of the cost of recapitalizing Wall Street.

It was Winston Churchill who observed that you can count on Americans to do the right thing -- after they have exhausted the other alternatives. This could be one of those times. (My emphasis)

Mark-to-Market to Mark-to-Make Believe (below is full quote from b):

Counterparty Risk Increases

When banks lend or take on other forms of exposure to each other, they gauge the counterparty risk. In recent weeks, there has been a widespread withdrawal of confidence in counterparties that has resulted in efforts to reduce exposure.
...
Dennis P. Lockhart, President and Chief Executive Officer Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Sep. 30, 2008

Whatever the best way to regain confidence in counterparties may be, this isn't it:

Under pressure from banks and legislators, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an interpretation of an accounting standard that could make it easier for banks to report smaller losses, or perhaps even profits, when they announce results for the third quarter, which ended Tuesday.

Now nobody will trust the Q3 results of any bank. Counterparty risk will be perceived as higher than before. The interbank credit market will freeze further.

It starts to feel like there is an intend to make the outcome as bad as possible.
~~~~~

The comments are dyspeptic, suggesting this may be using Shock and Awe to create chaos to leave the Big Banker Boiz fully in charge of a command economy. Yikes!

Dystopia, here we come?

"We don't have a lot of leeway on time," Reid told reporters in the Capitol. "One of the individuals in the caucus today talked about a major insurance company -- a major insurance company -- one with a name that everyone knows that's on the verge of going bankrupt. That's what this is all about."

He did not identify the insurance company, and later in the day Reid spokesman Jim Manley said the senator was speaking broadly and not referring to anything specific.

"Senator Reid is not personally aware of any particular company being on the verge of bankruptcy," Manley wrote in an e-mail to ABCNews.com. " -- http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/PersonalFinance/story?id=5926400&page=1