I thought I was crazy. I've been asking for about a week, "is there really a crisis?" And no one has explained that yes, there is a crisis. They repeat ad infinitum that there is one, but they don't explain what it is or why it should continue if things are just left alone. They say the banks have stopped loaning money, but that's not entirely true and it's not even sensible that they'll continue to refuse to make loans to creditworthy individuals and institutions. Why would they do that when making loans is what they do to earn money?

It strikes me that what is really being bailed out is the ability of lenders to package and sell loans they've made, realize a profit on the sale and not have the inconvenience of administering the loan. After all, what can be the problem with lenders making responsible loans to sound credit risks and getting repaid with interest? S&Ls did that for decades, it produced a stable market for mortgage loans, and S&Ls made money. There was no need for bundling and selling loans, no need for bundles to be rated and no need for insurance on the whole murky mess. So why don't we just allow lenders to do that and forget the rest?

I don't think this is a crisis except for supporters of the status quo which want to continue to do business the same way that got us into this bind.

with Maher's take on Christianity at least is that he does what the religious crazies do - takes Biblical stories as claims to literal truth, instead of as parables. The people who spoke and wrote the narratives collected in the Bible had no notion of our modern-day empiricism. To them, empirical fact was barely relevant to the telling of a story that conveyed (again, to them) a timeless truth. Like Plato's perfect forms, the story, the parable, the narrative was immutable and hence impervious to facts which were considered niggling, largely unimportant. All mythology does this, and Christianity is no exception. The myth of Icarus and Daedalus is empirically false, but what it teaches about extremism and moderation is highly relevant. Contemporary commentators who claim the biblical stories to be literally factual would be unrecognizable to the people of Mesopotamia 2000 years ago, whether they proclaim themselves to be believers like Sarah Palin or agnostics like Bill Maher.

Maher is a funny guy and any skewering of the nutcases of Christianity is welcome, but taking the stories of the Bible to be what they were meant to be can yield real wisdom today, just like it could back then. The notion that, in order to become a spiritual being, one must first figuratively die to one's material self should not be dismissed because Jesus resurrection is a scientific impossibility.

I don't buy the supernatural, but the spiritual? That's fairly common and has been for millenia. Countless books have been written on the subject in all sorts of languages from all over the globe by people who adhere to many different religions. The problem is that, in order to find it you have to seek it, and in a very humble, devoted and consistent way. I don't know who I find the more astonishing, atheists who swear there is no god without ever doing the spiritual work that everyone who's ever found god says you have to do, or phonies like Bush who claim to have found god one morning during a particularly bad hangover.

I'm not assuming anything. I ask people now and then and I find that they not only haven't done the work required, it never occurred to them that they should. That said, I'm interested that you have. If you feel like it, let me know your experience.

And no, I've never assumed the actuality of spiritual transcendence and then tried to justify my assumption. Quite the opposite in fact. I was an atheist for years until someone urged me to do a little meditation and lo and behold I discovered for myself what people were talking about and had written about all those centuries. I found it odd that I had always thought of myself as a pretty rational guy, rigorous in my thinking, but it had never occurred to me that to attain spiritual change, one must actually do some work in that direction. A simple concept really, but so few atheists get it.

I look forward to hearing your experience and what spiritual discipline you followed.

but I must admit I added boxes with some of my own pet phrases. I think that's called cheating, but it was more interesting than the public relations production sometimes referred to as the "debate."

I mean, that would cost us taxpayers another bundle. What I'd go for is the feds simply taking over banks that are refusing to loan money. It would be a short-term arrangement, but the feds would simply make the loans the banks aren't willing to. Simultaneously, the president should request the authority to do so from Congress. If Congress refuses, the mess would be on their hands. If it complies, the constitutional issue is resolved.

Truman did this with the steel industry in the 50s and the SC told him it was beyond his power as pres. But (a)the powers of the Executive Branch have, as we know all too well, greatly expanded since then, and (b)the SC emphasized in that case that the Congress had explicitly considered and rejected giving the president that power regarding the steel industry. But Congress has done no such thing here, so it may be that the pres. can take that type of action on a temporary basis and wait for Congress to give it to him explicitly.