Senator Robert Bennett: There’s no time to do this “right,” just give Wall Street the money

By Ken Silverstein

“I’ve spent the last few weeks talking to [Wall Street traders], and they want this money so badly—it’s an obsession,” Adam Davidson said last night during an NPR report. “Obviously it would be, it’s an awful lot of money…This particular solution, Wall Street loves it, economists hate it.”

Wall Street loves it, and so does its friends on Capitol Hill. Senator Robert Bennett was on after Davidson and predicted “very serious economic consequences” unless Congress approved the $700 billion forthwith. How serious? Bennett suggested that the Dow would fall by twenty to thirty percent by Monday if the bailout were not passed by then, adding: “If we say, no, we want to take the time to do this right, we want to put this provision in, and that provision in, and let’s debate it for another week, and thus send the signal that we’re not serious, I think the markets are going to fall off the cliff.”

Bennett, incidentally, serves on the Senate Banking Committee and it’s easy to see why he’s in such a hurry. The top industries that have funded his political career are (according to Opensecrets.org) Securities & Investment ($484,236), Commercial Banks ($377,074) and Insurance ($284,855). Bennett’s six leading individual PAC donors are, in order, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup, Fannie Mae, Bank of America, and the American Bankers Association.

So there’s no time for Congress to do it “right,” better to just fork over the money.