... or maybe not. I'm a smart guy but I'm not an expert in banking.

Seems to me that the banking crisis is driven by loans that were made in the past, under past conditions (e.g. little to no regulation, perverse incentives, dogs off the leash etc.)... that lenders now suspect may (will) not be able to be paid back. That's why people are freaking.

Now if those are bad loans, they're bad loans and someone is going to have to eat the cost. The question is who? We are given to understand that if the government doesn't eat the cost directly, the general public will indirectly through an economic recession. Of course, the little guy is always the human shield in these things.

But to restore the banking system (and more particularly, to restore liquidity--to make banks willing to lend again) what needs to happen is to ensure that any loans made FROM THIS DAY FORWARD are sound. If you do that, then past performance (or non-performance) becomes much less of a factor.

The problem with the bailout as presented--indeed, even the fact that the word "bailout" is being used--is that it treats only the symptom, not the cause. It's making up for bad loans while doing nothing to ensure that future loans are done in such a way that they'll be sound.

So, how do you ensure that future loans are sound? Well, for starters (this should be a no brainer by now) stop or severely modify the lending for production homebuilding. Building houses out of pressboard and vinyl has been a pretext for creating loans, bolstered by a blind ideological and cultural belief in (clap hand over heart and gaze lovingly at the horizon) "The Dream Of Home Ownership."

And so, abetted by th is blind faith in housing as an investment--it's safe as houses, really--he "value" of these flimsy boxes have been allowed to balloon completely out of proportion to their actual or potential utility, purely as a means of "backing" some loan. So if you put rules in place to stop this, there's a big part of the problem solved.

But look through the economy and consider where money is encouraged to be loaned just for the sake of keeping it circulating (aka "keeping the economy going") instead of directing it towards actual wealth creation.

I dunno, maybe I've just stated the obvious. It's hard to tell sometimes. (Back in 2000 it was obvious to me that Bush would run the country into the ground.)

she sure as shootin' knocked that one out of the dad-blamed park, gosh darn it. They're sure as heckfire gonna give Obama H-E-double-hockey-sticks in November when the good ol' ordinary folks pull that lever before headin' on home to the ranch for a... I dunno... a hoedown or something.

Gotta fix that, Glenn... before Drudge downloads it and pimps it to the information-poor voters who (like Mitt Romney, apparently) think they'll be throwing the Democrats out of the White House in November.

COP: "Mr. McCain, can you describe the man who kicked your ass during the 2008 election?"

MCCAIN: "It was a black guy. Maybe thirty, maybe forty but you know... it's hard to tell, those people don't age the way we do."

CUT TO the police rounding up young African-American males at random and making them run for public office. "But Officer, I'm just on my way to the post office." "Shaddup! We know you deftly countered Republican claims that you're going to raise taxes on middle-income earners. Into the office and start filling out those forms!"

But seriously, McCain isn't a racist. Why, some of his best friends-s-s-s-s are negroes.

Someone here commented that McCain looks really old lately.

Looking around at people generally, I get the sense that people don't age gradually; I'm now old enough that I've seen people who look youthful for years and years and then, in the space of two or three years, become obviously middle-aged. (Hasn't happened to me yet but I'm steeling myself.) Then it happens again later in life, when you suddenly go from middle-aged to "old" but not yet "ancient." And then, next stop, "ancient."

It's interesting that Barack Obama, although in his late forties, still doesn't look middle-aged. He looks like a guy "in his prime" (whatever that means) and if someone told me he's actually 32, it would not amaze me. The Time Fairy will likely swoop in on him in the next eight years, whereupon he will have the additional advantage of appearing physically mature in a way that underscores his obvious competence. For the next twenty or twenty-five years it's nowhere but up for Obama.

McCain has unfortunately stumbled over the ancient line and that is a bad line to hit--that's when the jokes about hot water bottles and gettin' those damn kids off my lawn come out.