I doubt a plan will be hashed out by the end of next week. Friday's happy bipartisan talk is going to get hit with a reality check. $800 billion is too much money to just write a blank check to Paulsen, I'm sorry.

I've heard that Dodd is opposed to a blank check, let's hope he takes a closer look at this crap. Hillary's statement on this fiasco is well worth reading.

And the Dems should think about sticking in a nice big fat tax increase for the rich to offset some of this cost. Higher estate taxes, higher income taxes for the top 5%, higher capital gains taxes.

And maybe a rule that you can't trade on the Dow Jones anymore if you don't pay corporate income tax in the U.S. You want an offshore shelter in the Caymans to avoid U.S. income tax? Well guess what, you are delisted from Dow Jones and Nasdaq.

The plans of both our Congressional leaders and our Presidential nominee are to run up the national credit card like a thirteen year old at the mall.  Posts like this one you put on the front page don't help us win.

There is so much going on right now and we've been watching and writing up as much as we can.

I want to point to two posts.

The first, Take Action, is the actual text of the bill being proposed before Congress and it's outrageous.  It gives executive power with no further ability from Congress to intercede.  This bill must be stopped.

The second post, What the Hell Just Happened? gives a very concise overview of the recent bail out timeline, with graphs, specifics but yet explains so a layperson can follow what the hell is going on here.

This has been shock and awe, 2.0 folks and they are moving so quickly and hence the public cannot digest what they are really doing with their money!

(EP is a new community blog site, like myDD but devoted to all things econ.   If money is involved, we're interested in looking at it.   We have a lot of people who post on DK, myDD and the Netroots sites writing on EP, simply working to get more focus on the real stuff.  Follow the money is our motto!)

Obama really has no choice but to support the plan; for that matter, we all have no real choice.  What Obama CAN do, however, is hammer home the fact that it is the Republican party's economic policies of tax cuts to the wealthy, a multibillion dollar deficit-financed war, and deregulation of corporate America that are responsible and say, as the first poster above does (I'm going slightly further), that the rich are the ones who have benefitted from the policies, and so they're the ones who need to shoulder a disproportionate part of the burden for the bailout through higher taxes, including a rescinsion of the moratorium on the estate tax.

Someone needs to grow some balls and point out that the middle and working class have been hammered for the benefit of the wealthy over the last 8 years, and we simply cannot afford to keep bailing out the wealthy when policies that benefit them continue to fail.

existenz said: "Friday's happy bipartisan talk is going to get hit with a reality check. $800 billion is too much money to just write a blank check to Paulsen, I'm sorry."

I'd like to think Dems in Congress have suddenly developed a spine, and in the middle of a close election no less, but there is no basis for believing that. The pressure is on: put your hands up and give us the money now or there will be a catastrophe and it will be your fault. It's another predictable cave to Republicans, with Dems perhaps being granted a token concession or two. This must be the biggest theft in world history, and in broad daylight, as they say. I was thinking it's like being mugged, but shock and awe is a good metaphor too. I didn't think they could rob us any more than they already have, but they always exceed our expectations.
The people who created the problem are going to fix it (for their own benefit of course), and they are already cheering on Wall Street.
 

The choice we face now is an improving future with Barack or a future falling apart with the same failed economic theories of the last 8 years being implemented by McCain. I feel optimistic about our future if Barack wins considering the choice ahead of us.

Trying to lookj for a silver lining.... at least this will help the average American understand that the current state of financial crapola was brought to us by the GOP administration.  You know that if this had occurred after the election that they would have hung the blame for it on the new presidemt....at least the republicans would.

This reality makes it all the more important to elect Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and to get them a solid Congressional majority so we can take this country back from the greedy few who have tried so hard to claim it for themselves.