History in the making

This season's news is far more thrilling yet entertaining than any TV shows ever made. The first black presidential candidate for the United States talks sense in this time of turmoil and is leading in the polls. The 72 years-old John McCain seeks to be the oldest first-term president and picks a female governor of Alaska with no national experience nor foreign experience (and needs babysitting by McCain throughout the campaign) to be his running mate. Her less-than-handful interviews by the media are disaterous. Financial institutions on Wall Street crumble one after another. Investment banks got bought up by gigantic banks which become even more gigantic, got nationalized or gone bankrupt. John McCain "stops" campaigning and rushs to Washington to "lead" a bipartisan meeting with House representatives, President Bush, head of the Fed and Treasury Secretary to settle on a bill that allows the government to use as much as $700 billion to bail out bad credits, but both Democrats and Republicans say that McCain is not helping if not bring trouble. The meeting ends with a standoff after the Republicans revolt. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson half-knees to the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and begs the Democrats to resume the meeting, and concedes that it is the Republicans that are holding back the negotiation. The House leaders spend the whole weekend doing some real work to sort out a bill, which is only rejected in the House by 23 votes, because many congressmen and congresswomen do not want to take the risk of upsetting their constituents only 5 weeks away from election. Dow Jones plummets by 777 points, the biggest one-day drop ever. The rest of the world follows suit.

This is history in the making. I am so glad to witness it up close.

p.s. The decision by a few US Supreme Court judges decided in 2000 the fate of millions in the Middle East. Let's hope that the decision of a few dozens of US House representatives do not turn the world over this time.