Playing Economist

Some reasons why I suspect that the bailout is a bad idea:

-We are giving the Bush Administration 700 billion dollars to use however they see fit. The Bush Administration. Am I the only one who sees a problem with this? When has Bush ever been prudent with our money? What crisis or problem has he ever successfully managed?

-Hank Paulson will have almost zero oversight. We're going to put the future of the US Economy in the hands of one Bush appointee? This reminds me of the FEMA director Michael Brown during Katrina. I can hear Bush now. "Hankie, you're doing a helluva job."

-Where is the 700 billion dollars going to come from? The US government certainly doesn't have it. Where are we going to get it? Borrow more from the Chinese? We already owe them 1 trillion; why not make it 2? Or perhaps we could go beg King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia? Then he could channel the interest from our loans directly into the accounts of extremists and terrorists who are trying to take over Pakistan or are killing our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

-What will the consequences of borrowing 700 billion dollars be? Inflation? A (further) collapse in the value of the US Dollar? If we're lucky, it will only be 15-20 years of economic stagnation, like in Japan.

Something can't come from nothing. This crisis is the result of a massive disequilibrium in the financial system trying to correct itself. A 700 billion dollar bail-out will only delay the inevitable. It allows us to avoid pain now for a lot more pain later. I wish Americans would for once not screw over future generations. We spent money we didn't have. We should pay for it. Not our children.