Art,

I would tend to agree with you for the most part, but for the one glaring inequity; that being that we have turned to the worst of the worst offenders to fix what was broken. The federal government has been and will continue to be the most inefficient, bureaucratic, incompetent, self serving organization in the free market, both as supplier and consumer. To have to turn to them as our only salvation indicates we have lost the war already, and the bailout did nothing but delay the inevitable, and quite probably make the eventual outcome that much worse.

We haven't avoided a calamity, we've only forestalled it, and the premium we are going to pay for that little respite will likely compound the adverse effects of tanking our economy by perhaps an order of magnitude now. By allowing our government to sell out our GDP as they have, we have converted what would've been a burden born on the backs of today's workers and extended it to encompass the lives of our children's children. In a very short time from now, we will be paying more in interest on our debt than the whole of the remaining budget, and more than our GDP. How do we recover from that? The answer is that we won't. It is fatal, and the most likely outcome will be that, just like the ruble and 1980s mexican peso, our dollars won't be worth the paper they are printed on.

Even if the current government were willing, I doubt there's anything they can do now to prevent our collapse. When the rebound from the bailout finally hits (and you can't expect to put that much more money into circulation and not have it seriously devalue the currency) and inflation takes off, bartering will be all that is left for us simple folks to get by on. That, and whatever you have stocked up beforehand. It won't be a temporary hit we take. I fully expect to die broke and in debt.