Liveblogging The Senate Banking Committee Showdown!
Oh hey Hank Paulson is talking to some lawmaker types, and a reader wrote in and was like, "Could you liveblog this?" and we thought, aw hell, we have already ripped all the hairs out of our ears and marinated in salt this morning, so why not engage in the last unpleasant activity available to us. How many drawers are being soiled in the Senate Banking Committee right now? Let's check it out!
11: 49 AM -- Just a few minutes ago Hank Paulson looked like he was seriously going to lose his shit. Now he's just sitting back while Christopher Cox explains "naked short selling," which sounds a lot more interesting than it is.
11: 52 AM -- A family of squirrels has moved into our roof and they are just goin' nuts right now, making crazy chewing and squeaking noises, and when you yell at a squirred "STFU I have to do a LIVEBLOG" they have no sympathy for you, at all.
11: 53 AM -- Now Bernanke is explaining "hold to maturity" pricing, which also sounds titillating but has nothing to do with Barack Obama's radical sex-ed plan. Ben Bernanke has a pleasant face. He is the only person up there who does not look like a starving ghoul.
11: 55 AM -- Ha ha, bet you wish you had an editor who knew something about money! Oh well. Henry Paulson sounds like Jesse Ventura. They share the same voice box. Also, too bad your editor has no idea who these questioners are. This one got dug up from Fraggle Rock. Did you know that Henry Paulson personally lost like hundreds of millions of dollars last week? Imagine what a bummer it would be if, in addition to presiding over the worst financial crisis in the history of your nation, you also had to worry about your own vast personal wealth being cut in half. It is amazing that Hank Paulson is not just one big walking ulcer right now.
11: 58 AM -- Oh huzzah now we are looking at this on the CSPAN, which does not cram half its screen with useless crawls and breaking news garbage. So that particular Skekzie who was just talking was Senator Robert Bennett, Republican of Utah.
12: 00 PM -- Hooray it is Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, the best senator ever invented. Oh dammit CSPAN just went over to some House procedural vote. Back to MSNBC. David Gregory: Lawmakers are mad that they only have a week to act when this problem has existed for a year now.
12: 02 PM -- Paulson: "We need something to work." Uh, yeah.
12: 05 PM -- Jack Reed is awesome. He just took three minutes of Paulson's stumbling blah de blah and was like, "So we're going to help the institutions that don't need help, for free." He would have made such a great vice president. Oh well!
12: 08 PM -- Paulson is spending a lot of time acknowledging complexity, difficulty, and frustration. "I have never been a proponent of intervention." So it is with great reluctance that he asks the American people to entrust the entire economy, to him, and not sue him ever.
12: 11 PM -- "Chairman Cox, I'm always interested in the accounting aspects of all these things." Ha ha, nobody is EVER interested in accounting. Senator Enzi does not want to throw water on an electrical fire.
12: 12 PM -- Chucky Schumer! He wants to focus on taxpayers. He proposes an insurance fund for the whole banking system -- a broad FDIC type dealy. Then he rips off his shirt, revealing a bondage outfit over a wet suit, and a bevy of loinclothed young Grecians trot out onto the floor of the Senate banking committee, an orgy breaks out, and Paulson quietly excuses himself. THE END.