Amen. Thank you for making such an important point so succinctly!

and what would you do

Where do I get the feeling corporations and financial institutions are looking at the government as a huge piggy-bank?

A Reuters headline this morning says the government will take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Holders of the common shares will eat dirt while preferred shareholders will enjoy the tax money bailout. I wonder if taxpayers will ever get tired of keeping failed businesses afloat? Since the government doesn't have the money to do this they will have the Federal Reserve print some up for them. Prepare for more inflation.

Soviets. They were honest and out in the open enough that everyone knew what they wanted - control of everything. The government here is not that honest and open. They will just creep up on us and eventually control everything, but we won't know it.

For as much as the Republicans keep whining about "socialism", they seem to have no problem with socialized corporate bailouts, socialized war, socialized health-care for Congress and the Army, socialized bridges to nowhere (which Palin supported)...the list goes on and on. Repubs are as guilty of a socialist mindset as anyone else.

We have a Limbaugh economist. I bet he never served in the military.

Flash: life isn't fair.

If the government doesn't intercede credit will dry up. This ends construction projects and business investment. Many worker's salaries are paid using short term loans.

I agree with the writer, being a liberal. Like Niel Bush and McCain during the S&L crisis, we the public have been skillfully moved in to a corner.

If we don't do these bailouts the economy will sink. You will be out of work and there's no money for depression style soup lines.

Are you better off today that you where four years ago?

It was don't the liberal press who cut 84,000 jobs and took three percent off share values!

The fact is, the press is under reporting the coming depression.

They are concerned about it, and have said so many times in these forums, but you are only interested in listening to you own rhtoric that fail to see that.

We need a dittofead to tell us Bush isn't accountable and Clinton did this.

These things don't happen in a vacuum. The greater portion of our current economic crisis is the legacy of the deregulation spectacle Republicans have pushed for the last 30 years. Had the banks and lending companies not been permitted by recent deregulation, to create the sub-prime Gordian knot, it wouldn't have happened. If Congress had done it's job, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac wouldn't have been able to lobby Congress to change the rules.

Ask yourself is this is responsible government: The government ultimately guarantees loans by Mae and Mac, then turns a blind eye to their business practices, allowing the "greed is good" god of the free-marketeers to escalate CEO payment to the stratosphere, and take risks. Then the government bails out all the irresponsible people with more tax payer money. As your senator and representative what their roll was in this. They helped and they should be feeling the heat.

People, it's time for us to take or government back. Write to you senator and representative instead of blogging from time to time.