Chicken Little Here...
 

Situation is now a genuine economic crisis. Contrary to some erroneous thinking here, fallout will not be limited to Wall Street. Small businesses relying on credit lines to make payroll are not using monopoly money. Typically it involves timing issues linked to receivables or the flow of contract funds. Financial markets came perilously close to collapse on 9/18, all bets are off now. Some banks may fail not because of insolvency, but because of market hysteria. Happening as we speak - see National City Bank. Eerily similar to 1929.

The bailout is a social construct as much as financial. Thinking is that failure to pass the bill will result in 8% unemployment, rather than current 7% forecast (currently at 6.1% nationally).

If the one point change = 5M jobs, do the math:

$50K avg. salary X 5M jobs X 2 years = $500B

Not a bad return on investment. Time for an end to political posturing related to political dogma and exec compensation.

Now email your representative(s).

so we've already spent 700 billion, we need to spend another 700 billion and all will be ok? That's your message, right?

No bailouts. Let them go under, and then auction off their assets.

Not the message. Simply put, the $700B bailout saves 5M jobs which represents $500B back into the economy. You must be in a recession proof industry.

Letting "them" go under plunges the U.S. into "D" word territory. No one with an ounce of humanity could wish for that.

What reason do we have to believe your math?

We've been lied to at every turn, now suddenly you have a crystal ball?

Go to the RTC model, not a pre-emptive saving of the failing S&Ls.

How can you know this? No one has known what the hell is going on until now.

I think this bill would have a better chance if Goldman, AIG and Paulsen hadn't met and cut their sweet deal without telling the rest of us. Did you read the NYT article about this yesterday? It's the no. 1 emailed article in the Times.

Kenysian economics got us into this mess, if you drill down. They all "knew" there would be a bail out.

Your numbers are junk science. I don't want them printing money like the Perons.

How many times did we hector and lecture the Japanese and the French: "You've got to let banks fail, people have got to lose their jobs before the economy can heal."

The problem here is Bush & Co. haven't made their case. Americans aren't convinced this is anything other than a circle jerk between Wall Street and Treasury.

Read the article. Agree that there were bad decisions and dishonest dealings. We are where we are and no amount of Monday morning QB'ing changes the basic premise this is a genuine liquidity crisis. Worldwide markets also falling dramatically.

the crisis is not a lack of money per se. It is a lack of confidence that other institutions are being honest. What we have is a transparency problem, and I don't see how pouring more money into that hole changes things.

We live in a la-la land, where somehow median housing prices that are north of 400,000 dollars are CORRECT and PROPER and a downturn in prices is going to kill us all. We HAVE to have a downturn in real estate to come out of this. It has to happen.

have they revoted yet? If you leave your post again, you will be banned. Don't come back until you know whether there is a procedural revote.

This is a good, although rudimentary, article by Prof. Delong (highly respected economist) at U.C. Berkely: http://www.scribd.com/doc/6182778/De...Asset-Meltdown

Suggest you also read more about Keynesian Theory.