It is true that the main action on the bailout won't happen immediately - except that stock prices for financial stocks who are hoping to get rid of bad paper SHOULD go up. It is kind of like, let's buy now, as the price will go up when they finally get their bad assets off the books. That is how Wall Street works.

Instead, other things are going on - a recession and a lack of liquidity that even $700bn isn't going to stem, and, most importantly, a continued devaluation of housing. The 'emergency' last week was NOT related to bad assets directly - it was a cash crisis related to short term lending. So financial stocks go down. Because the bailout didn't address these situations.

The 'bailout' is not working so far - even on its own terms as a 'gift' to Wall Street, pleading on bended knees so that the 22% of the population with 401Ks can see their 'stocks go up." There will have to be many other 'bailouts.' The question is, when will they deal with the root issue, the mortgage foreclosures and house values?

The primary purpose of the bailout is to shift wealth from future generations to the boomer elites.

There is nothing in current plans that addresses the fundamental issue of lost valuation.

We have politicians and administrative appointees, all of a certain age, strutting about, striking heroic poses, ostentatiously consulting dusty history books as how-to manuals, pulling levers and push buttons, seemingly at random. Their efforts are not just vain, but in vain. Are they clueless, or calculating? Do they want to restore confidence, or are they confidence men (and women)?

Here's a great idea: let's regulate the big banks, now that they're are all gone.

Let's prop up the whole shaky mess by printing even more of our struggling, leveraged dollars. What better way to measure the full faith of the US gummint in the years of "it's our turn now." We may never get health care, but hey, take your pick of complex financial instruments, young America.

Bill Clinton screwed young Americans with foreign objects and foreign trade deals, then pranced around the world pocketing his payoffs. George W screwed young Americans with foreign wars, foreign oil, and foreign-financed massive debt. He won't even have to prance, he pranced in the womb.

Here's the real question the Failed Generation doesn't want us to ask: How much is that ugly, energy-inefficent McMansion, full of Chinese-made consumer items, and with three 5 ton American-made SUV's parked in the garage, just how much is that sucker really worth?

How bout some of that health care instead? A cooler planet anyone? Wanna retire some day?

Got melanime-free milk?

For 16 years we have listened to boomers tell us that human and environmental cost didn't matter, that these values couldn't compare to the payoffs from anti-worker and anti-environmental trade, financial, and energy policies.

Well guess what Aquarians, we know different now. The real value in our economy lays in the quality of our lives.

Don't trust anyone over 50, and vote accordingly.

In response to this rule: "The questioners have to read their question exactly as it is on the cards, and then their microphones are cut off."

We can hope that some of the good guys get the chance to posit questions, and a few try shouting their *real* questions instead of what's printed on the cards.

The techs will cut the mics, but if the question is a good one, the crowd might want it answered anyway...that'd actually be like...NEWS.

My understanding is the questions are already picked. I'm sure Brokaw picks them. The questioners have to read their question exactly as it is on the cards, and then their microphones are cut off. No followups from Brokaw or the questioners are allowed. Maybe they'll make some change for the drop in the stock market today, but my impression is the rules are inflexible.

hahahahaha. Couldn't resist that -- you know @ some point Palin will be spouting some version of that or another.

Isn't it GREAT how we're somehow able to afford an expensive occupation of Iraq @ a couple billion a month? How do we afford this all? It's amazing, isn't it? Makes a fellow proud to be an American.

Both of the candidates supported the bailout.

Where are the exits? I want to find one now.

FDR did something very much like what you suggest back in the thirties. They called it the bank holiday. Every bank in the country was closed, audited and put back in business with new capitalization and under strict new regulations. Since FDR is right up there with the anti-Christ in the eyes of most Republicans, at least when their not trying to compare Bush's leadership to his in WWII, no Republican politition is ever going to suggest another bank holiday. Not even a lame duck president with an aproval rating so low he couldn't get elected dog catcher in his home town.

They haven't even started buying assets yet. Once assets are bought up from the banks and they are off their books, whether or not the banks start lending again at that point will tell the tale of the bailout.

With those debate rules, if you ain't Bacchus, who is?

take over the banks that are refusing to loan money. There is a lot of information to the effect that banks aren't even loaning money to good credit risks. That doesn't make any sense, and if they won't do it, someone should. banks are in business to make money by making loans at interest. Their refusal to do so harms individuals, businesses, the economy generally and the banks themselves. If done correctly, in combination with a request to Congress for temporary power to do so, the President probably has the power to take over the running of the banks. Because they are behaving in ways that are irresponsible to everyone and the economy generally, the federal government should take over those banks and operate them until this crisis passes or until bank officers make clear their intention to start lending again.