Sunday, September 28, 2008

Sunday's Times: The Bailout

I just read an article in the NYT about the bailout and I was left feeling a little bit uneasy about it. Apparently, Congress is supposed to draft a bill in regards to the bailout by tomorrow and put it on the House floor. At this point, I'm not sure how possible it is for a bill of this sort to pass considering all of the conflicting viewpoints within the "elite"(government officials). Recalling an article from health policy class (for anyone in it), it is extremely complex to get through this so called "legislative maze" in order to get a bill passed. I'm also skeptical about the bailout being the absolute last resort to save our economy. It could be possible that the media is framing the issue of the bailout as the last resort just to increases the chances of passing the bill. The public will probably be targeted by the media seeing that Congress aknowledges public opinion when making decisions.

1 comment:

Grape said...

Nice prescience Marta. Interestingly enough, I read a nice piece from one of my fave blogs that noted that a lot of the public opinion is dependent on the framing of the question. Given that even financial experts can't adequately explain how this happened, and what's the best way to get out of this, I'm not surprised that Johnny Q. Public is a bit hesitant over giving away almost a trillion dollars.

The interesting framing post is below:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/news-accounts-may-overstate-public.html