Portlanders to Congress: Don’t stick us with bailout bill

Poll says most people are unhappy with solution to Wall Street’s financial crisis

By Steve Law

The Portland Tribune, Sep 30, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (30 Reader comments)

A majority of Portland-area residents oppose a government bailout to resolve the financial crisis, and an even larger number say they are “angry and resentful” about Wall Street, according to a new Portland Tribune/Fox 12 News poll.

Forty-one percent of Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas county residents agreed that a bailout or rescue “is necessary to keep the economy from going into what could be a very serious downtown.” But 52 percent agreed that “people on Wall Street got us into this mess, and they should figure out how to get us out without sticking it to the taxpayers.”

Click here to read a summary of the bailout bill that was defeated Monday.

Pollsters from Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall Inc. interviewed 400 tri-county residents from Thursday to Saturday, before Monday’s 205-to-228 House of Representatives vote rejecting the Bush Administration’s $700 billion bailout plan. The poll has a margin of error of 4.9 percent, meaning results might be off in either direction by that amount.

The poll revealed tri-county residents have an unusually harsh assessment of Wall Street’s role in the financial crisis. Seven in 10 residents said they were angry and resentful about Wall Street.

“There was an interest level and a level of emotional expression that, quite frankly, we haven’t seen in the 30 years we’ve been doing public opinion research in the region,” said pollster Adam Davis.

That level of outrage lends credence to the notion that the Wall Street meltdown is a “once-in-a-lifetime event,” Davis said.

‘Not the best bill’

The poll was conducted at the tail end of a dramatic run on the deposits of the largest Northwest lender, Washington Mutual. The Seattle savings and loan was auctioned Friday to JPMorgan Chase, after what is being called the largest bank failure in U.S. history. Voters might have been even more angry had that news sunken in, Davis said.

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