Does Someone Who's Bleeding to Death Need a Transfusion or a Tourniquet?

I see a bailout as a blood transfusion for a patient that is bleeding to death. sure, it'll let the patient live longer, but why not stop the bleeding rather than just adding more blood?

The global economy is fucked not because we wouldn't pout 700 billion into the raging inferno to keep in burning, but because our politicians didn't have the balls in 1913, 1944, 1971, and don't have the balls now to stop the financial sector from adopting irresponsible and reckless practices as their common, everyday way of life. I don't see any bailout as a solution. I see it as more inflation... because the money is coming, essentially, from nowhere. No equal exchange of labor, just 700 billion from the central bank to continue to fuel the fire. as long as the fire continues burning, it's business as usual...

We have been operating on a completely unsustainable system since the dismantling of the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1971. Fiat currencies tend to do things like this (implode) when they are largely unregulated. But to actually fix it, what's needed is not more fiat money, but a serious amount of restraint, regulation, and hopefully an end to the commonplace irresponsible and reckless behavior of the financial sector.

Hopefully there will be a smaller bailout, because in that way the mainstream media is right--at this point we need it to survive in the short-term. But unless it's coupled with serious ass-kicking economic reform, it's just going to prolong the situation and make it even worse when the inevitable crash does come. A bailout without meaningful changes/reforms will set the stage for another bailout in a few years--this time by the IMF/World Bank.

But I don't think things are quite as bad as the Dow Jones reports would make them to be. People are still buying things (on credit even). Many companies are still profitable and still hiring. The financial sectors will feel a lot of hurt and they will pass it down through the rest of the economy and some innocent companies will likely go under... But companies that actually provide a useful service or produce a useful product will probably be OK. And the American people are quite resilient... We'll be OK too...

Bailout Failed! Or at least postponed...

The Bailout Bill was overturned by Congress. Given my economic/political biases... I think this is pretty good news. A bailout is a short-term fix to the long-term problem of gross fiscal irresponsibility practiced by our financial sector. The derivatives market has turned Wall Street into Las Vegas. And guess what--we, the American people, are the house. And the house always wins... Things may get worse before they get better. But if we want real and lasting economic stability, we can never let the government and the federal reserve print money out of thin air (or use our tax dollars) to bail out big business and finance.

Thomas Jefferson on Banking

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

--Thomas Jefferson

A tidbit from the Bailout Bill

Financial institutions are “designated as financial agents of the Government.”

“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

The fact that America is not a free market economy has been obvious to me for a while. I think now, it's not even debatable anymore... In a free market, when bubbles burst--PRICES FALL! It's natural, it's healthy, and it leads to a SUSTAINABLE economy. When, in order to keep prices of stocks, housing, and energy artificially high, the government pays TRILLIONS (and it well get well into the trillions) to bail out FAILED BANKS that wrote STUPID LOANS--that is called STATE CAPITALISM, and it leads to HYPERINFLATION. When I went to Russia in 1993, they were in the middle of a hyperinflationary period brought about by their State Capitalist economic practices (yes, they officially became a "democracy" in 1991, but c'mon...). When I got there, the exchange rate was 700 rubles to the dollar. When I left, 8 days later, the exchage rate was 800 rubles to the dollar. We are pointing ourselves down the same road.

Is this the USA? Or the U.S.S.A.?

This is proof that neither the democrats nor the republicans (save maybe one or two individuals) have any inkling of what the Constitution actually means. They are pawns of the corporate banking state and CLEARLY enemies of the people of the United States. Within the next several years, the IMF/World Bank as opposed to the US Government will be bailing out the American economy, our dollars will be worth next to nothing, and then we will be part of the 3rd world economy. Time to start thinking about what you're going to do with your first million dollar bill.