this is just a off the wall thought .im shure theres alot of folks that know more about my ?.ok if they dont pass the bail out an we hit real hard times .guess im sayin we hit rock bottom as americans are used to big life styles .recon in the long run it might help us to straighten our prioritys in life ,an start liven alitle less high on the hog? an then maybe mine an yours (kids) will have a chance in hell to have a good life?i think us is changen to only 2 classes of people not 3 .alot like the rest of the countrys we try an save .(rich/poor) no middle class.what do yall think im 40yrs old an not very up on world politics but in my litle part of the world this is the way it seems.thxs yall .

To me, it's obvious that if things get worse, you will be more likely to see 2 classes instead of 3. If people are not at the higher end of the employable scale (well-educated, skilled, young, fit, whatever), they are going to have much more trouble finding work in bad times. There won't be prosperity to drag society's less employable up into middle class.

For a bail out, I suggest that after you jump clear of the aircraft, arch your back and count to ten, then LOOK at the ripcord handle, grab it with BOTH hands and pull it straight out from your body. When the chute opens, look up at it to make sure it's fully inflated. Then prepare for landing with your feet together and your knees slightly bent. Try to roll when you hit. Once you're down, pull hand over hand on a few shroud lines to collapse the chute.

As far as the US economy goes, 90% of the current problem is just people freaking out. The other 10% of the problem is caused by unintended consequences of goverment interference. The rush for the goverment to "fix" the "problem" is causing the rest of the people to freak out.

More like 50-50. The government's 50% came by interfering with the free market system in the first place.

Vote No Bailout If you are so inclined, you can easily send your Congressional Representatives emails telling them to vote no from this link. Remember everyone, they work for us!! They must follow the will of the people...

Whatever the cause (panic, government regulation, lack of government regulation), the fact is, the credit market has collapsed. commercial paper trading and interbank lending, two huge lubricants of our economy have stopped. Soon, companies will be forced to stop construction, additional hiring and R&D to name just a few things. Other companies that are otherwise profitable but have to borrow just to cover seasonal fluctuations in their business will be forced out of business (e.g. retailers, farmers).

To give some anecdotal evidence on top of the news I now hear everywhere, where I live, a huge very reputable construction company just walked away from a $100 million project because its financing vanished. It painfully left $3 million behind in escrow. If you think the "Bailout" is about saving fat cats, consider the thousands of construction jobs that now won't exist just because of the collapse of one local deal. Things like this are being repeated in every town and company across the country.

You're correct Yuccahead but the longer we support the ongoing fiasco, the bigger and deeper the fall that we will take.

IMO, it's better to let it fall now, straighten out the practices (the same ones that led to the Great Depression), pick up the pieces, and get things going again.

I of course feel differently. Without a bailout, we will end up with a much bigger recession or even a depression. With a bailout, we will hopefully have something not much more painful than the recession of the early 90's.

In spite of the philosophical issues that everyone agrees upon such as not punishing bad behavior and other 'moral hazards', smooth economic growth is much preferred over volatile up and down swings. This is the overriding reason that banks have had a defacto government guarantee on their existence and the reason banks are rescued (or are forced to merge).

Prior to the emergence of central bank rescues, a single bank failure/run could and would ruin an economy for years. Panic would spread from city to country and around the globe. Since the Fed stepped in and saved Continental Illinois Bank in the 1984, saving banks that are "too big to fail" has been recognized as prudent financial management in spite of the moral hazard issues.

Most reports I have heard have blamed the current total collapse of parts of the credit market on the Fed making a point that it wouldn't save save every bank if bank management was stupid. The Fed refused to save Lehman Brothers Bank and suddenly, financial risk managers realized that their seemingly stable counter parties may not be there next week. Lending stopped.

My point is, sure some people acted stupidly and might have become undeservedly wealthy and now deserved to pay a steep price, but I don't see any reason to ruin the entire global economy just to ensure that someone gets punished.

If a person is falling from a cliff, is it better to let them hit the ground, and then patch them up, or is it better to cushion the fall?

Recovery from a sudden crash of any sort is a much longer and more painful with a longer recovery period than is necessary or desirable.

I'd bet that an attempt to cushion the fall would fail miserably and it might even result in injury or death to those attempting to do so.

While I subscribe to Adam Smith's philosophy, you appear to fall into the Keynesian category. And never the twain shall meet. (Note to moderators: this isn't politics or religion, it's economics.)


If we stipulate that this is true, I still don't see how we would expect the government to be competent to smooth out the swings. How's it been workin' out fer ya so far?


In other words, we have spoiled the child for years, so now its too late for tough love.


Perhaps if they were allowed to fail when they have proven to be stupid, it would reduce the number of Stupid Huge Banks That Must Not Fail Because A Lot Of Innocent People Would Be Hurt.


I'm not certain that all lending has stopped. Although I'm sure some lending by stupid people to broke people has stopped.


For me, its not at all about punishing anyone, even the CEO's with golden parachutes. My point is, when a company is stupid, or even unlucky, it fails, thus reducing the ammount of unlucky stupid companies in the market. When we bail these idiots out for the sake of the common good, we are actually harming the common good.

Some good points certainly. The unlucky/stupid sentence in the last paragraph is great.

When you ask, "How's it been workin' out fer ya so far?" I would say better than if we didn't have a central bank. There has not been a depression in this country in nearly 70 years. Before that, they happened roughly every 20 years. In this sense, I'm more of a monetarist than a Keynesian. I don't trust a government to do this at all.

However, an independent central bank -- with the power to save failing banks -- seems to be the best solution we have going right now. The 'bailout' has different actors with, supposedly, a similar goal to Fed action. It is a US Treasury (i.e. government) led effort to restore confidence by providing good cash for rotten assets to many banks all at one time. Given the motivation of the actors, the bi-partisan nature and the current credit market collapse, I'm in favor of it right now. (Here, I might understand the Keynesian comment). Without a bailout, the risks of a global economic collapse are very high.

(I didn't mean to imply all lending had stopped, but that lending via commercial paper and inter-bank lending had effectively stopped. As of yesterday, it doesn't seem to have resumed. Many companies with good balance sheets are scrambling.)