SmartRemarks

So, Congress passed the bailout financial rescue bill on Friday. 58 House members changed sides, and it sailed through… although both support and opposition remained genuinely bipartisan.

Nobody, including the supporters, seems very happy about it. Even in the Senate, where the deal was forged and the bill passed on Wednesday, everyone seemed to insist that given a little time, the relevant committees could have crafted a far better proposal. Secretary Paulson’s approach benefited from well-chosen timing: as the first past the post when the crisis arose, it became the model around which all debate was focused.

But now that it’s law (in a revised version), we seem to be stuck in a perplexing and anticlimactic moment. We’re groping blindly through history, unable to return to the status quo ante, but equally unable to point to any desirable future. Thus the big question remains…

What next?

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