Stop calling it a bailout. It's unfreezing the credit markets. Calling it a bailout is like saying that preventing a ship from sinking with 2,000 passengers aboard is "bailing out" the captain.

Once banks have more liquidity and are solvent again they are going to raise interest rates and limit lending. People who have struggled with their payments will be a worse position, and those that need to borrow new money will find that it is more expensive and harder to get. And then the US taxpayer will have to cough up billions again, this time to actually bailout Main Street.

Just wait and see.

So be it.

There's an upside.

There are only 74 of these guys on the planet.

Has anyone on Earth other than our obviously superhuman Senate managed to read and make sense of this version of the bill?

On what theory or facts or historical record or very strong marijuana (I don't think I want to smoke any, it's a real downer) do you base this prediction of yours?

Whether or not this is a good bill is not quite the point. We don't know. No one knows. This bill is as long as a novel, and many times as dense. Have you read your mortgage contract? Imagine reading a novel of that. So, we can assume that pretty much no one in the Senate has read this bill to the level of detail such a thing demands. This was a political negotiation, where the participants were probably more focused on their end of the deal rather than the thing they were actually passing.

So, given how much we don't know, let's look at what we do. We know the credit markets are frozen and the results of doing nothing are very dire. We know that the original plan was cooked up by an administration whose answer to everything is a play for unfettered power, a series of incredible fuckups, and an astronomical price tag. We know that it was then modified by one of the most impotent congresses in US history. And we know it costs $700B.

It doesn't bode well.

Not to sure about the drug reference. Very confusing. You must really enjoy the dope but if you can put your reefer bong down for a minute I'll explain basic economics to you.

Main Street will not get a big break from the current bailout because in the past banks have leveraged their lending capacity to a point that will not be tolerated anymore. They also lent to people that quite frankly didn't have the capacity or willingness to pay back their loans. So when banks begin lending again there are still millions of people that shouldn’t be lent to and banks will now, by law, be more prudent and either won't lend to them or will charge them rates that reflect the risk involved. Credit may become available again but easy credit won't.

The car you want will cost more in interest. The house you still owe on won't be easy to refinance and less people will have access to the credit needed to buy it from you. God forbid you have a medical problem (in the only marginally first world country without universal healthcare) and need a home equity loan. Not going to happen.

So that leaves banks solvent and suddenly prudent lenders. After all they made a mint and got bailed out when they lost part of it. But after $850 billion Main Street still hasn't got squat and now they'll complain and get their own financial bailout.

$700 billion has turned into $850 billion and within a year will be double again.

Now do you want me to tell you how CEOs are still going to get Golden Parachutes?

...what would happen if everyone defaulted on their loan repayments and now we have the answer when only a few greedy, foolish, Americans do. The rich and greedy pigs of capitalism, who happen to think they run the world, have colluded in the greatest theft that many will ever see in their lifetimes and had it rubber stamped by a bunch of so called legislators who do not even bother to read what laws they are signing off on. The panic that this event has been imbued with is similar to the hard sell some salesperson puts on to close a deal so they can go home and count their hefty commissions. That's business 21st century style. It's like doing deals on speed, where it all happens like some kind of hazy whirlwind. Once the dust settles the American taxpayer and every borrower around the world will be paying for this handout, (a bailout it ain't,) to the richest 20% of the world's population. This will entrnech the finacial control these scumbags have over people's lives and coupled with the ever expanding surveillance state will see the emergence of a super fascism which would make Hitler and Mussolini cream their jeans with envy. Thus the successful completion of part of the agenda set by The project for The New American Century andthe heralding in of The New World Order. We have all been dealt a sucker punch and no longer can anyone expect that the world will become much batter in the forseeable future. A future which only promises more enslavement of the working class and wars and poverty and inequity. No wonder the relgious fundamentalsist think they have nought to lose by blowing themselves up to murder a few of their fellow slaves. No wonder the Christian right sees Armageddon at every turn of the page. What a great recipe to exploit and bake into the cake of pure, unadulterated Fascist dominance.

As near as I can tell, you seem to have a problem with banks becoming prudent lenders once again. Because they were practically giving away free money, a return to prudent, sensible financial principles is now going to be a disaster? I don’t see that. Main Street will go on being Main Street, as it was before the Mad Money Episode. On the other hand, if this “bailout” (very wrong term, bad salesmanship on the part of the gov’t) doesn’t happen, you dambetcha Main Street is going to get a break – it’s gonna get broken.

Now, about your obsession with golden parachutes. The only people who really have the right – and you might say, the obligation – to complain about golden parachutes are the stockholders of the companies who award them (in private companies, it’s no one’s business but the owners’). That’s capitalism – if you want another system, move to China. Golden parachutes aren’t the issue, never have been, they’re just something to get the ignorant masses all fired up. If the shareholders of HP want to sit there and let Carly Fiorina walk away with 42 Mil after harming the company, what skin off your nose is that? And if you’re an HP stockholder, where’s your pitchfork? Anyway, I’m not going to spend any more time on that.

People like you -- and you are hardly alone – squawking about the bailout while the economy locks up and the damage becomes more and more likely to last into the long term, can hardly be blamed for being distracted by the notion of Fat Cats stealing your money. But that’s not what’s going on. Check back with me in a few months, when the Treasury has made money on buying and selling securitized debt. You may not realize the disaster that was averted, you may still be foaming at the mouth about having to pay a normal, sensible interest rate when you buy a car. But you’ll have to admit, the economy is still operating – and believe me, that will not be the case if we don’t get the credit markets running again.

If you have a TV and a DVR and can find all the buttons, record Charlie Rose last night (oops, too late) with Warren Buffett. I understand why none of us believes Bush, but surely you’ll give Buffett some credibility.