Can the U.S. Afford Political Gridlock Already?

With the near collapse of the financial system in 2008, the Bush Administration, with the Republican party in control of both houses of Congress, took aggressive, unprecedented action. The government was not grid-locked. Decisive action was possible and was taken. As President Bush described it in his just-released book Decision Points, credit markets had seized up, panic was rampant, the financial system was on the brink of collapse, and an already severe recession threatened to drop the economy off a cliff into another Great Depression. So the Bush Administration, with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke as point men, brokered the sale of troubled investment bank Bear Stearns and brokerage firm Merrill Lynch

to stronger financial firms, took over giant housing lenders Fannie Mae (

) and Freddie Mac (

), and in the near-panic after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, rescued giant financial firm AIG

with an infusion of $85 billion (in exchange for warrants on the company's stock that made the government 79.9% owner of the company).

.