> No Banker Left Behind: Wall Street Works the Phones as Dow Drops 700
> Points
> Â
> "...Wall Street doesn’t have enough people to fight back the
> unpinstriped masses...!
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> ulisse
I was curious what the above was about. It's from a WSJ blog entry: http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2008/09/29/no-banker-left-behind-wall-street-works-the-phones-on-700-billion-bailout/
September 29, 2008, 1:36 pm No Banker Left Behind: Wall Street Works the Phones as Dow Drops 700 Points Posted by Heidi N. Moore
“No banker left behind” has been the sarcastic tag pinned by critics the $700 billion bailout bill currently in Congress. One online petition protesting the bill currently has just over 5,000 signatures.
The U.S. Congress has voted on the proposed bill and soundly defeated it. Ahead of the effort, Wall Street was lobbying like there’s no tomorrow. (Which, considering the history of the past three weeks, there may not be.) Congress’s vote held that 228 — mostly Republicans –said no and 205 said yes. As the “No” votes rolled in, the Dow was down nearly 700 points at the grimmest point, showing that the market was really depending on this bailout bill. The Dow recovered slightly to a loss of about 580 points from the open.
The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, for one, is a whir of pinstripes and Gucci loafers. The organization, which represents Wall Street and particularly anyone involved in the capital markets, sent out a red-festooned, aggressively capitalized “Immediate Action Alert!” email to its members at 11:38 a.m. today with the subject line “Please call Congress this morning.”
The organization urged, “We urgently need you, and your employees, to make calls before noon today to the House of Representatives and ask them to pass The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 to bring stability to our economy and increase credit availability for the benefit of every American citizen There are no viable alternatives and doing nothing is not a reasonable option.”
The electorate is so far unstinting in its outrage. Some news reports suggest that some members of Congress have received up to 2,000 calls or emails a day, each. Some shake their heads that the public reaction has not been this great since the impeachment of President Clinton.
Wall Street doesn’t have enough people to fight back the unpinstriped masses. But that’s lobbying for you. There is one thing we do know: if Treasury really wanted to win this thing, it shouldn’t have revealed that the $700 billion number was pulled out of thin air. “It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes last week. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”
That’s the kind of comment that can bring a Treasury Secretary to his knees.
Deal Journal reprints the SIFMA message to its members below.
Dear Industry Member,
We are now just hours away from Congress’s vote on legislation vital to our industry. We urgently need you, and your employees, to make calls before noon today to the House of Representatives and ask them to pass The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 to bring stability to our economy and increase credit availability for the benefit of every American citizen.
As this morning’s news reports have made clear, no one is sure of the outcome. Therefore, we need everyone to show support for this critically important legislation. We expect the vote at noon today, so please contact your Member of Congress immediately and please forward this e-mail to your employees, asking them to do the same.
To call and e-mail your Representatives visit www.house.gov and look in the upper left hand side of the screen where you can enter your zip code and find your Representative. Or if this site is non-responsive, visit www.congress.org and look in the upper right hand side of the screen.
Please let your Representative know the following:
We believe this legislation is critically important and should be enacted into law at the earliest possible time in order restore market stability and increase credit availability for businesses and consumers across the country.
Every day, working Americans rely on healthy credit markets for home loans, auto loans, student loans and other types of financing. These credit markets help support small businesses as well, which need cash flow to meet their payrolls.
The legislation Congress will vote on today will restore confidence, credit availability and market stability in a timely manner. There are no viable alternatives and doing nothing is not a reasonable option. You want your Representative to vote in favor of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. Thank you for your immediate action contacting Congress.
-The SIFMA advocacy team
Update: We updated the market numbers and the votes as the bill failed.
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