Background from AP here. OK, this thing was not going to be enacted into law anyway, everybody knew that. No House version, no plans for getting past a Bush veto. The question always was, to me, whether this was a real protest from Senators going into another election cycle, or was this a coordinated effort to help the administration's bargaining position with Beijing?

I don't know the answer to that question, but let's see what has happened recently. The Hank Paulson Dog & Pony Road Show took place, the RMB nudged up a little bit, albeit to record levels, and a new layer of bilateral communications was put into place. Was this enough to calm down Schumer and Graham or was the the plan all along to pull the bill after a while? Maybe some day an insider will give me the real story, but for the moment I will be up all night pondering.