In a liquidity crisis, the Bush admin. would naturally come up with a trickle-down solution: They want to take money out of all our pockets, ship it to the top, and let it trickle down to future taxpayers who are footing the bill.

If we are to spend $700 Billion to provide liquidity to the system, lets use a trickle up solution. The Gov. should issue $2,500 real estate certificates to every citizen of families making $150,000 a year or less. They could be sold or traded, but only redeemable by the government to banks for real estate purchases.

Can someone tell me why this wouldn't accomplish the same thing as Paulson's plan, while allowing us to touch the money before the banks got a hold of it?

It would be a lot simpler to administer.  It makes me choke watching them bend over backward to b"be fair" to all the banks.  Boy, we wouldn't want to discriminate there, would we?  What about us?

I think, without getting into conspiracy theories, that it is imperative that we realize the bailout as the October surprise we all feared would come. The Wall Street crisis is not the surprise, but the bailout itself.

An October surprise is a dramatic global event with enormous consequences that steals the control of the narrative from the challenging party and exposes them to tremendous risks no matter which way they respond.

The very fact that the bailout is couched in terms that would be unacceptable to so many Democrats should tip us off.

I am no expert, and so I can only see the broader arcs of the dilemma, but to quickly accede to the proposed bailout provides 700 Billion dollars of unfettered power to the executive branch, and cripples the flexibility of a new incoming administration.  To delay, play politics, insist on new regulations, runs the risk of making Democrats appear responsible for any continued collapse in the market over the next two months.

I don't have a clue what should be done, but I do know that the Democratic Party response needs to be  unified, and Obama, risky as it is, needs to step up to the plate and serve as the leader of the party.