http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/update-bill-clinton/704104/

No good legislation can be written in 6 days. Period.

This bailout will suck. From everything I've read it does NOTHING to address the underlying problem of the derivatives market or the failure of ratings agencies (who labelled all these derivatives as 'low risk'), it gives the money to the same people who made all the bad decisions to begin with and rewards their bad behavior.

Not to mention the fact that pumping this much money out, on top of all the other bailouts and the already existing deficit, virtually guarantees that we'll be living with inflation rates outstripping savings rates and the rates of most 'safe' investments for next decade. Way to stick it to those of us who try to be responsible with our money.

The Democrats blew this one bad, almost as bad as the Iraq War and this will have even worse long terms effects than the Patriot Act in eroding American power and fanacial security.

Down 500 is nothing. The market is still above 10K and likely to stay there for a while. The 'panic' that everybody is screaming about is just not there. The big boys are still keeping their money in the market.

That should tell people something.

I acknowledge there is a problem. I just refuse to believe that it requires actoin RIGHT NOW!!!!! or WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!

I'm sorry Mr. Leonard, I refuse to drink the kool-aid. This is classic THE SKY IS FALLING rhetoric designed to keep people from thinking.

This is a bad bill that does NOTHING to address to the underlying problems of the derivatives market, the failures of ratings agencies and even the red-herring of 'executive compensation' is basically silly that doesn't really decrease executive pay.

I'll give the Republicans credit for killing a bad bill. They did it for the wrong reasons (they want even LESS requlation). But at lest they did it.

I know I keep repeating myself but ...

The Democratic leadership in Congress (Dodd, Reid, Pelosi especially) blew this one bad the second they bought into Bush's THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!!! rhetoric. They now look like the gang that can't shoot straight if they don't get a bill out RIGHT NOW.

They should have declared the Paulson plan DOA and questioned the hell out of the Bush's dire warnings rhetoric, taken a deep breath and worked to pass a good bill.

Idiots.

Lot's of people got paid. A huge amount of money got dumped into the market by the various automatic buys for 401k accounts. There was also a lot of people realizing that IBM and Microsoft are probably not going out of business in the next few months and started buying some stock on the cheap.

Percentage wise the current 'collapse' in the market doesn't come close to '87 and we survived that OK.

Take a deep breath, relax. There are some serious problems out there but rushing off to pass a bad bill because Bush screams THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!! is not the answer.

Let this thing play out, if 'liquidy' needs to be injected than target it towards solvent financial institutions in the form of loans so they have the capital to by up the good assets from their fallen brethen.

As for all this talk of 'credit crunch' its largely hot air. Yes the banks are reluctant to loan money to somebody making $30k a year to buy a $100k cadillac and other such idiot loans. But people, like me, who have good credit histories are still getting lots of offers from banks for loans. A fellow employee just got a new line of credit yesterday.

In other words what is over is the banks financing people to live beyond their means. I have yet to figure out why that is a bad thing.

Yes loans may be little harder to get today. Especially for people with damaged credit. But why is this a bad thing?

We've been hearing for months about how irresponsible credit is what got us into this mess. People buying more house than they can afford, bigger cars than they can afford, charging everything to their credit cards.

Now banks are getting stingy. They are not going to lend someboby making $35k a year $85k to buy a new car. People do not need to buy a new car every 4-5 years (pay one off, get a new one). I've had the same car for eight years, it works fine, I plan on keeping it for at least another 3-5 years. It's not that I can't afford a new car (I can with room to spare) its that I don't NEED a new car.

The 'credit crunch' is a sign that banks are not willing to finance people living beyond their means.

This is a GOOD thing.

Pumping more money into the credit market just delays the day of reckoning. This bill does NOTHING to address the underlying problems that caused this mess and in fact makes the situation WORSE.