Perhaps I spoke too soon. Despite the announcement that the president and Congress had reached agreement yesterday on an unprecedented Wall Street bailout, the bill went to the floor of the House of Representatives for a vote today and failed 228-205. It appears, much to my pleasant suprise, that sensible Republicans and Democrats joined together to vote against this reckless waste of your and my tax dollars.
Following the vote the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped precipitously over 600 points. The Dow fluctuated up and down between a 400 and 600 point loss most of the afternoon before crashing again to a -777 point close. This is the largest one-day point drop in the history of the Dow, but it only accounts for about a 7 percent loss. Percentage-wise, this does not even rate in the top-10 of one-day losses.
The roll call on this vote is available from the Clerk of the House of Representatives web site . . . the title and description are misleading, since the bailout was apparently structured as an amendment to a previous and only-loosely-related bill, but this is indeed the vote tally for the bailout. Unfortunately my representative, Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA 10th), voted in favor of this ill-advised monstrosity.