The proposed $14 billion rescue plan for the auto industry agreed upon by the House and Bush Administration fell apart in the Senate late last night. A proposal by Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the lead
GOP negotiator, to reduce the wages and benefits of union workers, failed to gain traction. "It sounds like UAW blew up the deal," Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said.
In making the
announcement that "there's too much difference between the two sides" shortly after 10 p.m., Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) also said that he dreaded in the impact on
financial markets of the failure to come to an agreement. "It's not going to be a pleasant sight," he said.
Sure enough, global equity markets "tumbled," on
the news,
Financial Times reports. And the dollar hit a fresh 13-year low against the yen. Early trading on
Wall Street was down, but not at the fire-sale levels we've seen on other days this year.
David E. Sanger, meanwhile, has an interesting piece in the
Times about a position that may never be filled -- "Car Czar," which the headline posits is a
"fuzzy description for a big job. Sanger's story also points out that although rescue talks appear to have collapsed, they may very well revive -- and it wouldn't be the first time that
something left for moribund in Washington was brought back to life
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