I would point out that markets are driven by future expectations, and when the stock market assumed, on the basis of the vote in the House, that we would not have any kind of Federal action on the financial rescue package, it dropped more dramatically than at any other time in its history in total number of points, and percentage-wise it was the worst drop since 9/11.

Now that there has been an expectation that the Congress will move, the stock market is back up today, but nowhere near back up to the point it was before the drop occurred yesterday. If we break the expectation once again, this time the market will drop and there will be no coming back up. This time, your 401(k), your pension plan and your retirement account will be hurt in a way that will take years to recover.

Let's talk about numbers to demonstrate the importance of this. One of the things we have heard with respect to the financial rescue plan is that $700 billion is far too big an amount for the taxpayers to absorb. Yesterday, over 1 trillion dollars' worth of market value was wiped off the books by the stock market drop. We must understand that it is ordinary people looking at ordinary pensions with their ordinary Main Street kind of 401(k) plans who lost that trillion dollars and they lost it in a matter of minutes. The market plunged over 700 points in a matter of minutes, and one trillion dollars' worth of ordinary American value was wiped out.

This is not a trivial event, and we should pay attention to it. The stock market now believes we are going to get serious about this and get something passed, and so it is up today about 250 points. But that is only one-third of the more than 770 points that were lost yesterday. We should not congratulate ourselves on the 250-point rally that it has somehow removed the sting of the more than 770-point drop that occurred yesterday.

We keep hearing that the markets will adjust and everything will be alright and the stock market will be okay. But let's move away from the stock market to where the real problem lies, which is in the credit markets. We don't have a single barometer for the credit markets the way we do with Dow Jones following the stock market, but we have indications all along the way that the credit markets throughout the world have seized up. That is, banks are not loaning to banks and banks are not making credit available to those who have been their best customers as they wait to see how this works out. That is the place where those people who are saying this applies only to Wall Street are going to end up paying a huge price.

I have used this example before, but I am finding it is being duplicated in other States. Amidst the avalanche of phone calls into my office from angry Utahns demanding that we vote against this because they say this is a bailout of Wall Street; there are one or two other phone calls that get through. One of them came from an auto dealer. In the city or town where he operates, he is the city's largest employer.

He called and said, “Senator, I know you are getting a lot of calls on the other side of this issue. Let me just point out one thing with respect to my business. I am the biggest employer in this town, and I may not be able to make payroll on Wednesday. The biggest employer in town and none of my employees will get checks because the bank won't give me the line of credit that the bank has been making available to me for decades.”

That is the implication of the seizing up of the credit markets. That has nothing to do with the stock value of this particular car dealer. That has to do with the paychecks that go into the pockets of the people who fix the cars, who wash the cars, and who try to sell the cars. They are the ones who will pay the price of the inaction in the Congress.

There are those who say, “We should restructure the regulatory system so this doesn't happen again. We shouldn't act in such a precipitous fashion until we get all of these other issues on the table and discussed. Let's not act quickly.”

I am perfectly willing to agree that the regulatory structure we have basically going back to the 1930s is inadequate for the kind of world in which we now live. And I am perfectly willing to agree the restructuring should be a serious one and a deep one. If you do a serious and deep restructuring of the way we handle credit markets in this country and confer with our counterparts in other countries around the world so the world structure is intelligently constructed, you are talking months, if not a year or so. And while we are putting forward our pet theories as to how that should be done, with experts on talk shows and from think tanks pontificating on cable television, payrolls may not be met in towns in my state.

This is a crisis that has to be dealt with now. We can deal with the restructuring of the financial regulatory system at our leisure, but we must not take our eye off the seriousness of the crisis, both in terms of its size and in terms of its pressure. This morning's financial journals make it clear that throughout many countries in the world they and their central banks have not yet addressed the seriousness of the crisis, and we will see problems overseas begin to wash up on our shores to make our problem that much worse if we don't act.

There are those who say, “We shouldn't give this much power to the secretary of the treasury. I don't like the idea of one man having this much authority.”

 The proposal that has been put together creates an oversight board with real power. It creates a board that could rein in a secretary of the treasury who abused his power or who got out too far in front. It is my understanding that we have built-in congressional review in the bill that the House defeated -- congressional review and oversight -- that could have said to a secretary of treasury, “You have extended too far, and we are going to hold back on the authority we have given you.”

But we have a crisis that needs to be dealt with and needs to be dealt with now. We shouldn't be arguing over whether the city council should second-guess the police chief as he rushes to deal with a crisis, a police chief in whom the city council had confidence when they chose him in the first place. This secretary of the treasury is well known as one of the more expert money managers in the country. He has been completely open in all of his discussions with members of the leadership of both parties, and members of the leadership of both parties have expressed confidence in his ability to do this. They have created an oversight board in the bill that would pull him back if he acts improperly.

The entire $700 billion will not be committed immediately and cannot be committed immediately. It must be handled in an orderly fashion. We understand from the secretary that the pattern of its disbursement will run at the level of about $50 billion a month. So we are not talking about giving $700 billion overnight in a single check to a single man for him to go out and waste. Those on the talk shows who make that comment simply demonstrate they do not understand what is in the bill.

But the fact that the secretary of the treasury can say to the credit markets that are frozen, “I have potentially $700 billion available to solve this problem,” is a very powerful message that will help solve the problem. A very important part of the problem is the sense of confidence that we are serious about getting it done.

If we say, “Well, we are going to give the secretary of the treasury $100 billion and see how it works, that sends a message we are not confident that this will do any good. If we are going to say, “We want a board to examine every aspect of this proposal. We are not going to give the secretary authority to move ahead decisively,” that sends the message we are not confident this will work.

The bill the House voted down, which said the secretary can say to the market that potentially we have $700 billion that can be applied to this problem, and he has full authority to commit it, subject to review of the oversight board and the ultimate review of Congress, is a statement of confidence that the markets can believe.

Now, let me talk just briefly about where the $700 billion number comes from. It is not pulled from out of the air. It is not a number that somebody thought up as sounding pretty big. The total amount of mortgages in the United States is approximately $14 trillion, and the percentage of those mortgages that are bad and probably cannot pay out is about five percent. Five percent of $14 trillion is $700 billion. But the assets that the $700 billion will acquire will not be all of the bad mortgages. The assets they will acquire will be a mixture of bad mortgages and good mortgages. Why? Because nobody knows which are the bad mortgages and which are the good mortgages. The only way we are going to find out is by holding the mortgage to maturity and seeing which ones get paid and which ones don't. They are all packaged together.

So the secretary, by putting five percent of the total amount of mortgages available to acquire those that are questionable is sending a message of great confidence to the market by acquiring those mortgages and creating a circumstance whereby once the good ones pay out, the taxpayers will receive money back.

Indeed, there are some who say the U.S. Government will make money. I don't happen to believe that it will, but I can't prove that it will not, and there is certainly an indication in past history that it will.

If we go through the past circumstances, we can see where the federal government has intervened in circumstances of need, starting with the Chrysler loans where the federal government made money.

Chrysler righted itself by virtue of having access to that money, paid interest on the loans, and the taxpayer received a financial benefit for the government having entered into the Chrysler loan program.

If I had been in Congress at the time, I probably would have voted against it for other reasons, but for financial reasons, it was a good deal. If you look at the deal that has been made recently with the Federal Reserve and Bear Stearns, the Federal Reserve stepped in with the Bear Stearns circumstances and what did they do?

They forced the sale of Bear Stearns and then they opened the Fed window so Bear Stearns could borrow money. What happens when you borrow money? You pay interest. By making sure Bear Stearns did not go down, the Federal Reserve guaranteed that Bear Stearns will be able to pay the interest on the money that is made available to them. Who gets that interest when it is paid? The American taxpayer.

It will be paid into the Federal Reserve account. When the Federal Reserve makes money, their surplus gets paid to the American taxpayer. The American taxpayer will receive a benefit, a financial benefit, from the deal that was made by the Federal Reserve and Bear Stearns. The same will be true with AIG, the insurance giant. They will be paying interest on the money that has been made available to them on a loan basis, and the taxpayer will receive that interest.

So for those who are out there adding up the face value of every deal we have made and then adding it to the $700 billion and then telling us all that it is gone and there will never be any of it coming back to the Treasury, that is wrong. They are misleading the American people with that kind of talk. Frankly, it is those commentators who are adding up those numbers irresponsibly, who are driving the angry phone calls that are coming into my office and the office of everyone else here.

Now, I understand their anger. I am sympathetic with their anger. I am as disappointed as anybody that we allowed this situation to get to where it is. But I say to those who are angry: Let's leave it up to the historians to sort out where the blame should go. Let's put out the fire right now. Let's not spend our time as the fire is burning running around trying to find out who the arsonist may have been, while the fire destroys the building. Let's free up the credit markets right now. Let's send a signal of confidence to the world markets right now. We should have done it on Monday in the House of Representatives. We did not.

Negotiations are now going on between the leaders of both Houses and the leaders of both parties to try to find some new program that might pass. Once we do, we will get another vote. The Republican leader has made that very clear. The majority leader has made that clear. We are not leaving town until we get another vote.

That is why the stock market is as encouraging as it is. But we must understand, if we do not act, the lack of confidence will produce a worldwide wave of credit seizing up, and it will be the small businesses, it will be the 401(k) plans, it will be the pension programs for teachers and nurses and others who are depending upon those plans for their retirement that will pay the price.

Some will feel very virtuous about having voted against Wall Street and then turn around and find that their constituents generally have paid a huge price for that vote.

The stock market took over one trillion worth of value out of the American economy in a matter of minutes on Monday afternoon. We must do everything we can to make sure that does not turn into two trillion, three trillion or four trillion wiped away because the Congress was not willing to stand up to its responsibilities.

I have faith that ultimately we will. I have faith that the Members of the House and the Members of the Senate will ultimately recognize their responsibility and do the right thing.

I go back to a quote by Winston Churchill, who commented on Americans, generally. And he said, “The Americans can always be depended upon to do the right thing after they have exhausted every other possibility.”

Monday we exhausted our every other possibility. It is time to do the right thing. We in this body, as well as those in the other body, need to rise to the occasion.