LiveBlogging the Bush Bailout Address

Amanda Carpenter | September 24, 2008 9:02 PM

Here we go:

9:02pm: It's getting harder to borrow money, that means financial crisis. As a result our entire economy is in danger, he says.

9:05pm: "Easy credit combined with the faulty assumption home values would continue to rise led to excesses and bad decisions....and mortgage holders began to default."

9:06pm: Fannie and Freddie borrowed "huge sums of money" and "put our financial system at risk." Banks had assets they could not sell off and collapsed.

9:07pm: Says his "natural instinct is to oppose government intervention..but these are not normal circumstances...the market is not functioning properly."

(Okay, this is me talking. This is a disaster. He's going to cause panic by the end of this speech.)

9:08pm: Says he invited Mccain and Obama to the White House tomorrow to hammer this bailout out. Says he feels bad for Americans who pay their mortages and taxes on time, but "not passing a bill now would cost these Americans much more later."

9:13pm: Bush ends his 13-minute speech by saying after "this crisis is resolved it will be time to update our financial regulatory structures."

Summary/my take: Bush used the bully pulpit to make credit a civil American right and make the socialist case for government intervention because markets aren't "functioning properly." Worse yet, he didn't even bother to place blame on the heads of people who deserved it: the greedy lenders, the frauds at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and all those people who lied about their loans.