This crisis has weakened the United States terribly during a time of war (two wars). If this economic crisis had been precipitated on purpose by a third party – say a country who wished us ill – it would be an act of war, and any collaborators would be arrested for treason.

I submit that the banking system knowingly gambled with the economic well being of this country at the worst possible time, knowing full well that it could not stand, and knowing that they would be able to hold us all to ransom using the mountain of debt they piled up as a weapon. Given all this, I call them self-serving, narcissistic traitors, and call for their arrest.

Secretary Paulson’s attempt to make such a naked power grab in his pitiful three page “plan” while all of our futures hung in the balance leads me to question his patriotism as well.

And where are the leaders of these banks, whose corruption has brought us to the brink of the abyss? Not one word, not an apology, not an offer to try to fix the mess they’ve made. They just dispatch a legion of stooges (including our “President” ) who spread panic in the public media to stampede us into giving them a $700 billion handout to save their sorry behinds.

Answer this Mr. Banker – if there were no government funds available, how would you fix this trainwreck? Because that’s what you would be doing right now, on your own, without even being asked, if being a citizen of this country actually meant anything to you. Clearly, it does not.

I need to see multiple humiliating perp walks, and I need to see them now.

It should be 20%. That’s what it was when I bought my first house. 10% should only be allowed with heavy PMI payments.

Answer is simple: liar loans.

One simple, easily enforceable, regulation could have prevented the whole mess:

You have to put at least 10% down to buy a house. This would’ve kept housing prices in check, encouraged saving, discouraged reckless speculation, and would’ve kept most buyers right side up in their mortgages. This in turn would’ve bolstered the securities that packaged these mortgages.

A lot of these people have lost millions and in some cases 100’s of millions, so these people are hurting and they should be.

Ralph Nader.

Though mention of his name causes a Pavlovian reflex of a hissy fit among most Democrats who have bought the MSM’s smear job of Nader.

1) Tax payer bailout? No one’s taxes are going up. The Chinese are going to pony up the cash, or whatever is left on the table after the Fed is finished monetizing.

2) Capitalism requires the risk of failure to work correctly. Let these institutions fail. If there’s a market for their services, new smarter firms will fill the void.

3) Credit default swaps on treasuries haven been spiking as this bailout looms. Let’s not risk a downgrade of government debt.

Property taxes are a source of revenue that backs some municipal bonds. In the current environment, it’s no surprise that the market views these revenue sources as more risky than when the bonds were issued, thus the price should go down.

Over 2/3’s of the Republicans voted “no” and I applaud them for responding to their constituents instead of their big-money donors. It’s called the House of Representatives because the members are supposed to represent the votors in their districts.

I think the Democrats have lots of splainin’ to do. 60% of them voted for the bailout but I’d be VERY surprised if more than a handful of them actually had a majority in their district who supported the bill. I don’t know yet how my Congresswoman, Tsongas, voted, but I advised her to vote ‘no’. We need a better plan than this bailout.

The Dow closed down about 735 points, which, as I said above, may represent some good buying opportunities for the brave and the patient, since investors’ initial emotional reactions tend to be a bit overblown.

As far as I know, Bush, Paulson and Bernanke are still Republicans, unless they switched party affiliations recently. Do you know something that I don’t? Yes, there are some GOP members who are opposed to this handout, but there could be other factors, like them being up for re-election in November, or “free market” considerations, as well as the issue of moral hazard. BTW, the minority House leader, Rep. John A. Boehner (R), does support this handout.
I don’t think the fact that the GOP is not united in its opposition to this handout, or that the opposition is coming from GOP, proves my assertion wrong – that there’s little difference between the two parties, or that the Democrats have failed miserably on the Iraq war and the impeachment issues, since gaining control of the Congress.

YMMV, and that’s fine with me. We obviously, have different metrics of evaluation.

The Dow dropped over 700 points on the news but recovered a little bit as of this writing (2:45pm). There may eventually be some good buying opportunities in here for the brave. A month or so ago I bought lots of Bank of America in the mid 20’s and sold it last week for some fat profits in the mid-30’s. I was hoping a big drop in the Dow would give me another shot at some more but amazingly BAC is still almost 33 as of this writing! Other stocks that I follow have also dropped but not as much as I hoped.

The situation is somewhat different in the Senate because not the entire Senate is up for reelection this November.

If your theory is true then how does it explain why most of the opposition to this bail-out is coming from the GOP? I though they had even MORE rich fat cat friends.

Mr. Ashbrook, I’ve sent you and NPR a few emails requesting you to have Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney on your show so that American voters can hear some different voices, but it seems that NPR has imposed a blackout on third-party candidates on the left, though Bob Barr still made an appearance because he is likely to help the Democrats by taking votes away from McCain. Looks like there’s not much integrity left anywhere among the American people and institutions. Is this the beginning of the end, just like another empire started to collapse in 476 AD?