Good evening and welcome to the Daily Strike. Tonight's entry will be short, because we've already covered a lot in the Weekly Strike, and the previous entry (a dialogue between The Big Picture and me).
THE NEW PLAN: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner finally had a good day today. His plan to buy toxic assets through a public-private partnership was well-received on Wall Street, with the Dow climbing almost 500 points. I'm very curious to hear the thoughts of those who blamed Obama when the stock market was going down. I assume they'll give him full credit for today's increase!
Of course we need to remember that what's good for the stock market is not necessarily good for the country. That's probably one of the top two or three lessons learned during the Bush years. Someone on the other blog mentioned the following scenario. Imagine if the government levied an extra 10 percent tax on middle class Americans and said it would direct that money to hedge fund managers. That would obviously be bad for the country. But it would be very good for the investor class. They would anticipate very high profits, and the stock-market would skyrocket. So we must remember to never interpret a rise or fall in the stock-market as any indication on the overall health of the economy.
ALTERNATIVE ENERGY: President Obama gave a speech today touting investments in alternative energy in the FY 2010 budget. He said that alternative energy is part of a comprehensive approach to grow the economy. The speech came on the same day that a key EPA report was released, which asserted that greenhouse gases threaten people's health. Can you imagine the Bush EPA coming out with a report like that? Another reminder that elections have consequences.
SENATE: The Senate voted moments ago to move ahead with a bill to expand national service programs. The bill passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support. I was interested to see if some Republicans would vote against this procedural motion to protest that the Senate was not considering the bonus tax bill. That doesn't seem to have been the case. The motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed was agreed to by a vote of 79-14, with all no votes coming from Republicans.
HOUSE: The House dealt today with non-controversial bills under suspension of the rules. They'll do the same tomorrow before voting on the "Tomnibus" public lands bill and FLAME Act later in the week.
That's it for tonight, I'll be writing tomorrow night from a conference in Cleveland, Ohio. Should be pretty exciting.
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