This is an article i found....pretty much what i was thinking and probably everyone here was thinking...

Lawmakers raised doubts Monday about what would be the largest government bailout in American history, but a bigger, more terrifying question lurked right under the surface: What if it doesn’t work?

Failure, says one insider, is not an option.

“The alternative is complete financial Armageddon and a great depression,” said a former Federal Reserve official. “Where do they go after this? Well, the U.S. government could nationalize the banking system outright.”

A few months ago, that idea would have been laughed out of the room.

But no one’s laughing anymore.

While almost no one wants to dwell publicly on the possibility that a $700 billion package could simply be too small to forestall a financial meltdown, privately some aides were already thinking of what the government might do if the Treasury plan passes but fails.

In a statement Monday, President Bush said that “the whole world is watching to see if we can act quickly to shore up our markets and prevent damage to our capital markets, businesses, our housing sector and retirement accounts.”

What the president didn’t say is that the whole world will be watching to see not just if Washington can act but whether Washington’s actions can still make a difference.

Under the current plan, the U.S. government will buy up to $700 billion in assets from private holders on Wall Street. That would help banks stabilize their balance sheets, and in theory provide an incentive for banks to begin extending credit among themselves again — a critical component of a functional financial system.

So what’s Plan B?

There really isn’t one.
If this week’s bailout doesn’t work, the government will probably have no choice but to continue to buy assets. There’s no one left to pick up the tab. “The private sector got us into this mess,” said House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.). “The government has to get us out of it.”

Getting us out of it would likely mean buying up even more debt in the markets if the $700 billion fails to turn things around. That could include credit card debt, which is securitized and sold on Wall Street the same way as home mortgages, car loan debt and even commercial real estate debt, until the problem begins to recede or the taxpayers gain effective control over the nation’s banking system.

So how will leaders know whether it’s working or not?

Traders and Washington insiders will look at credit market indicators to gauge their progress. One number in particular will be the focus of enormous attention on the day the bill passes: the difference between the interest rate offered by the federal government and the rates private banks charge when they loan money to one another.

If confidence is returning to the credit markets, the spread between the two numbers should begin to narrow as the banks’ rate — known by the acronym LIBOR — falls. But if the credit market is still in distress, the spread will widen.

In theory, traders should be able to see the results of any congressional legislation within minutes of news of the bill’s passage hitting Wall Street.

Here’s the good news: Already, just based on the news that Treasury is working on the proposal, the spread has been narrowing this week, down from the dramatic highs of last week. That means the market is pricing in an expectation that Congress will act and that the action will work.

If everything goes smoothly, it is even possible that taxpayers will profit from the deal in the long run, as the underlying assets accumulate value over the coming years and the government is able to ultimately sell them back into the market at higher prices than it’s paying now. Of course, it’s also possible that the values will never come back, in which case taxpayers would be on the hook.

The specific details of the package were a moving target on Monday, and congressional Democrats tangled with administration Republicans over the exact makeup of the bill.

Said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.): “The last thing any of us want is to be back here in a month coming up with some new plan because this didn’t work. It’s important that we act quickly, but it’s more important that we act responsibly.”

That’s congressional code for: “Hey, wait a minute.”

The Banking Committee’s ranking Republican was of a similar mindset. “I am concerned that Treasury’s proposal is neither workable nor comprehensive, despite its enormous price tag,” said Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama. “In my judgment, it would be foolish to waste massive sums of taxpayer funds testing an idea that has been hastily crafted and may actually cause the government to revert to an inadequate strategy of ad hoc bailouts.”

Ultimately, the negotiations will come down to doling out huge new powers, including:

• Buying Power: This is the cornerstone of the proposal — allowing Treasury to buy up to $700 billion of privately held assets in the market. The original proposal called for buying power to be limited to “mortgage-related” assets, but a later draft expanded that to allow the government to purchase any “troubled assets.” There’s a staggering difference in authority between the two phrases, and it is a moving target as of press time. The banking industry generally favors the second version, but that potentially exposes taxpayers to much higher costs.

• Managing Power: Under the Bush administration’s plan, Treasury would hire private managers to handle the hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of assets it will soon own. But Treasury was silent on whether those managers would be able to actually negotiate directly with homeowners who hold the troubled mortgages. Democrats would go further and demand that bankruptcy judges be given the ability to renegotiate those failing mortgages on behalf of homeowners. This will be one of the more contentious sideshow fights of the negotiations.

• Global Power: Under one version of Treasury’s proposal, the government would have the power to buy assets from any institution in the world that it deemed worthy of a bailout.

• Pay Power: Democrats on Capitol Hill say they want the final plan to include restrictions on payouts to the executives of the financial institutions that take the taxpayer lifeline. Paulson says he doesn’t like this idea, but it may be tough for elected officials to oppose this populist carve-out in an election year.

• Equity Power: Democrats would like the government to get shares in the financial institutions that take federal help — effectively giving taxpayers ownership stakes in the nation’s largest banks and providing them with a huge windfall if those institutions prosper in future years.

• Oversight Power: Treasury’s initial proposal included very little room for congressional oversight of the new effort, calling for reports to be sent to the Hill just twice per year. That isn’t flying with Democrats or many Republicans on the Hill; if a bill makes it through Congress, it will almost certainly have much stronger oversight provisions.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,426221,00.html

The Newt talks about it. Apparently some far-left company is awarded 500 million for nothing, just a friend that they wanted to give half a billion to.

So what’s Plan B?

There really isn’t one.
If this week’s bailout doesn’t work, the government will probably have no choice but to continue to buy assets. There’s no one left to pick up the tab. ”The private sector got us into this mess,” said House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.). ”The government has to get us out of it.”


HERE IS THE KEY PART OF THAT ARTICLE. The private sector is to blame. Government shall save us again.

excuse me while i scream bloody murder with frustration.









OK im better now. The truth is OUR government did this. They made these companies start giving "equal opportunity loans" out to poor people who shouldn't be getting loans in the first place. This all took place around 1999. Ten years later and the Chicken have come home to roost. AND IT JUST SICKENS ME TO DEATH that our media and our government ESPECIALLY the conservatives we send to Washington WONT SAY THE TRUTH. THE FARKING TRUTH MAN!!! Its because we have given loans to stupid people. And this political correctness BS has mad us ALL stupid!!!

Yesterday Gleen Beck on his radio program revealed that he took the entire weekend and studied the ball out proposal. And believe it or not he supports it now. Where as before he was against any bailout.

Because the truth is last Wednesday night was a financial 9/11. Wednesday night people started taking money out of their investments/banks in record numbers such has never been seen. For about8 hrs the United States banking system had ZERO money to give ANYBODY any loans. N O N E. Gleen Beck likened it to the part of the movie Its a Wonderful Life when the banker told the people wanting their money that "YOUR MONEY IS IN MARTHAS HOUSE" "AND YOUR MONEY IS IN PETE'S HOUSE" Well Wednesday night, what little money there actually was, was GONE, all was being withdrawn. If the government hadn't stepped in that night with and infusion of cash the Dow was set to start 830 DOWN!


Unfarkingbalievable. Our government caused this and now they blame private investors. You do know who the private investors are right?? THAT YOU!! Anybody with a IRA, or a 401k. Its almost like they planed back in 1999 to screw things up so they could swoop in, buy hundreds of billions in investments, AND OH BY THE WAY, they gave themselves all these new powers over our private investments.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ultimately, the negotiations will come down to doling out huge new powers, including:

• Buying Power: This is the cornerstone of the proposal — allowing Treasury to buy up to $700 billion of privately held assets in the market. The original proposal called for buying power to be limited to ”mortgage-related” assets, but a later draft expanded that to allow the government to purchase any ”troubled assets.” There’s a staggering difference in authority between the two phrases, and it is a moving target as of press time. The banking industry generally favors the second version, but that potentially exposes taxpayers to much higher costs.

• Managing Power: Under the Bush administration’s plan, Treasury would hire private managers to handle the hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of assets it will soon own. But Treasury was silent on whether those managers would be able to actually negotiate directly with homeowners who hold the troubled mortgages. Democrats would go further and demand that bankruptcy judges be given the ability to renegotiate those failing mortgages on behalf of homeowners. This will be one of the more contentious sideshow fights of the negotiations.

• Global Power: Under one version of Treasury’s proposal, the government would have the power to buy assets from any institution in the world that it deemed worthy of a bailout.

• Pay Power: Democrats on Capitol Hill say they want the final plan to include restrictions on payouts to the executives of the financial institutions that take the taxpayer lifeline. Paulson says he doesn’t like this idea, but it may be tough for elected officials to oppose this populist carve-out in an election year.

• Equity Power: Democrats would like the government to get shares in the financial institutions that take federal help — effectively giving taxpayers ownership stakes in the nation’s largest banks and providing them with a huge windfall if those institutions prosper in future years.

• Oversight Power: Treasury’s initial proposal included very little room for congressional oversight of the new effort, calling for reports to be sent to the Hill just twice per year. That isn’t flying with Democrats or many Republicans on the Hill; if a bill makes it through Congress, it will almost certainly have much stronger oversight provisions.


UNFARKINGBELIEVEABLE....................

Where's your money going?

Up to $700 billion to buy assets from struggling institutions. The plan is aimed at sopping up residential and commercial mortgages from financial institutions but gives Treasury broad latitude.
—Up to $50 billion from the Great Depression-era Exchange Stabilization Fund to guarantee principal in money market mutual funds to provide the same confidence that consumers have in federally insured bank deposits.
—The Fed committed to make unspecified discount window loans to financial institutions to finance the purchase of assets from money market funds to aid redemptions.
—At least $10 billion in Treasury direct purchases of mortgage-backed securities in September. In doubling the program on Friday, the Treasury said it may purchase even more in the months ahead.
—Up to $144 billion in additional MBS purchases by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.The Treasury announced they would increase purchases up to the newly expanded investment portfolio limits of $850 billion each. On July 30, the Fannie portfolio stood at $758.1 billion with Freddie's at $798.2 billion.
—$85 billion loan for AIG, which would give the Federal government a 79.9 percent stake and avoid a bankruptcy filing for the embattled insurer. AIG management will be dismissed.
—At least $87 billion in repayments to JPMorgan Chase (JPM) for providing financing to underpin trades with units of bankrupt investment bank Lehman Brothers (LEH).
—$200 billion for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Treasury will inject up to $100 billion into each institution by purchasing preferred stock to shore up their capital as needed. The deal puts the two housing finance firms under government control.
—$300 billion for the Federal Housing Administration to refinance failing mortgage into new, reduced-principal loans with a federal guarantee, passed as part of a broad housing rescue bill.
—$4 billion in grants to local communities to help them buy and repair homes abandoned due to mortgage foreclosures.
—$29 billion in financing for JPMorgan Chase's government-brokered buyout of Bear Stearns in March. The Fed agreed to take $30 billion in questionable Bear assets as collateral, making JPMorgan liable for the first $1 billion in losses, while agreeing to shoulder any further losses.
—At least $200 billion of currently outstanding loans to banks issued through the Fed's Term Auction Facility, which was recently expanded to allow for longer loans of 84 days alongside the previous 28-day credits.

A quick check of the totals shows that is $1.809 trillion dollars that Congress is hell bent on wasting...

And they have no choice, they are told, Not the people, not the taxpayers, not their ellected officials, the ones in charge are now the ones who have been slowly manuvering, the Financial and Beaurocratic Elite. Power Players, who play with the power stolen from the people.

And you pay for every step they take.

Dick Fuld, CEO of the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers, walked off with $490 million for his term of office, but if you cant make your housing payment, you dont get to keep it. No, the government buys it with your tax money, and then they will sell it to another bank or corporation to sell back to you, at a small (inflationary) profit, as long as housing prices dont fall back to what they were before companies like Goldman Sachs set about selling toxic securities to unsuspecting pension funds, companies and individuals around the world, while at the same time selling “short” these securities, i.e., betting that their value would decrease. It is estimated that Goldman Sachs made billions of dollars on this scheme alone, which, if not constituting fraud, certainly borders on it. They Inflated these values with fraud, and now they will make you pay for your losses, not once, but twice.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/business...amp;oref=slogin

Its not hard to see who the winners are.


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.

http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/10687/...hello+feudalism

Or the losers.

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np



http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2008/Defau...ment21sep08.htm

And to see how the view looked from 2006, see if we are that much closer, yet.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259

Paulson looks a little like Putin, ill admit.

And they want to tell us who is to blame? hah, i laugh, at all of them, and hope, we never forget who took us this far, even as i never stop hoping that we can make it back to where we once were.

Free.

Once.

what pisses me off the most is rather than bailing out the homeowners who are going through forclosure - they bail out the banks that forclosed on them. WTF?

its the tax payers money that is bailing them out

Got this in an e-mail and thought I would try to inject a little humor where there really is none. After this, retirement ever looks doubtful. Wonder which shoe will drop next, Obama wins?

anonymous

What a concept If our Congress were interested in the people instead of lobby payoffs and in their

stupid efforts at ONEUPMANSHIP---------------

I thought this was a brilliant idea!

I’m against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.
Instead, I’m in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a We Deserve It Dividend.

To make the math simple, let’s assume there are 200,000,000 bonafide U.S. Citizens 18+.

Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up..

So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billon that equals $425,000.00.

My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a We Deserve It Dividend.

Of course, it would NOT be tax free.
So let’s assume a tax rate of 30%.
Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes.
That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam.
But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket.

A husband and wife has $595,000.00.
What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family?
Pay off your mortgage – housing crisis solved.
Repay college loans – what a great boost to new grads
Put away money for college – it’ll be there
Save in a bank – create money to loan to entrepreneurs.
Buy a new car – create jobs
Invest in the market – capital drives growth
Pay for your parent’s medical insurance – health care improves
Enable Deadbeat Dads to come clean – or else

Remember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+ including the folks who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company that is cutting back. And, of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces.

If we’re going to re-distribute wealth let’s really do it...instead of trickling out a puny $1000.00 ( “vote buy” ) economic incentive that is being proposed by one of our candidates for President.

If we’re going to do an $85 billion bailout, let’s bail out every adult U S Citizen 18+!


As for AIG – liquidate it.
Sell off its parts.
Let American General go back to being American General.
Sell off the real estate.
Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up.

Here’s my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn’t.
Sure it’s a crazy idea that can “never work.”
But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party!
How do you spell Economic Boom?

I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 Billion
We Deserve It Dividend more than I do the geniuses at AIG or in Washington DC .
And remember, The Krieg plan only really costs $59.5 Billion because $25.5 Billion is returned instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.

Ahhh...I feel so much better getting that off my chest.

PS: Feel free to pass this along to your pals as it’s either good for a laugh (or a tear) or a very sobering thought on how to best use $85 Billion!!

Chris Dodd and Barney Frank are two of the major contributors to this problem; Making Freddie and Fannie a democrat piggy-bank. Both have also been huge opponents of the free market.

Now, we are letting these same people throw almost a trillion dollars into the fray!

All this talk about greedy companies and evil mortgages are really catching on.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but events seem to be unfolding by design.

The line between government and corporation has officially been erased with the AIG bailout, and it's pretty obvious by now who's really calling the shots: the banking cartel, i.e. the Federal Reserve. Their power is growing and consolidating at the expense of both the consumer and the tax payer (read: you, twice), and it's taking us to a dangerous precipice not just as a nation, but as an entire planet. Mussolini had a good word for what's taking place within our government at this very moment: "corporatism." Which most people referred to as "fascism." Global hegemony is what the elites who are running the show want, and they want the tentacles of their control to extend into every aspect of your life. The fact that the US Government now effectively owns half of all private residences in this country is disconcerting. The fact that foreign governments are quickly buying up the rest is even worse. The fact that this is really just the beginning is scary as all hell. Sure, they have all sorts of noble intentions, but when was the last time you thought your government or your bank was really doing something that was in your best interest? In the words of Eric Blair, "Power is the object of power."

Sorry 1911 but that math sucks. They say 85billion but they do math for 85 trillion! $4,250 not $425,000 would be they appropriate number for dispersal. I know you didnt write it and it is a compelling email but I hope that people change that figure before they forward it on.

An email from Ron Paul to me:

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Dear Friends,

Whenever a Great Bipartisan Consensus is announced, and a compliant media assures everyone that the wondrous actions of our wise leaders are being taken for our own good, you can know with absolute certainty that disaster is about to strike.

The events of the past week are no exception.

The bailout package that is about to be rammed down Congress' throat is not just economically foolish. It is downright sinister. It makes a mockery of our Constitution, which our leaders should never again bother pretending is still in effect. It promises the American people a never-ending nightmare of ever-greater debt liabilities they will have to shoulder. Two weeks ago, financial analyst Jim Rogers said the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made America more communist than China! "This is welfare for the rich," he said. "This is socialism for the rich. It's bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters."

That describes the current bailout package to a T. And we're being told it's unavoidable.

The claim that the market caused all this is so staggeringly foolish that only politicians and the media could pretend to believe it. But that has become the conventional wisdom, with the desired result that those responsible for the credit bubble and its predictable consequences - predictable, that is, to those who understand sound, Austrian economics - are being let off the hook. The Federal Reserve System is actually positioning itself as the savior, rather than the culprit, in this mess!

• The Treasury Secretary is authorized to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets at any one time. That means $700 billion is only the very beginning of what will hit us.

• Financial institutions are "designated as financial agents of the Government." This is the New Deal to end all New Deals.

• Then there's this: "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." Translation: the Secretary can buy up whatever junk debt he wants to, burden the American people with it, and be subject to no one in the process.

There goes your country.

Even some so-called free-market economists are calling all this "sadly necessary." Sad, yes. Necessary? Don't make me laugh.

Our one-party system is complicit in yet another crime against the American people. The two major party candidates for president themselves initially indicated their strong support for bailouts of this kind - another example of the big choice we're supposedly presented with this November: yes or yes. Now, with a backlash brewing, they're not quite sure what their views are. A sad display, really.

Although the present bailout package is almost certainly not the end of the political atrocities we'll witness in connection with the crisis, time is short. Congress may vote as soon as tomorrow. With a Rasmussen poll finding support for the bailout at an anemic seven percent, some members of Congress are afraid to vote for it. Call them! Let them hear from you! Tell them you will never vote for anyone who supports this atrocity.

The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care?

When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media?

Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be.

In liberty,

Ron Paul

Thanks for the math correction. Americans have very short memories. Didn't we just play this game with the savings & loan debacle 20 years ago? For those too young, the answer is yes.

stirring in my pot....

Another Email from Ron Paul to me, how the hell did so much of the country overlook this man!?

Dear Friends:

The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.

We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.

Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I'd only be repeating what I've been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.

Still, at least a few observations are necessary.

The president assures us that his administration "is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets." Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?

We are told that "low interest rates" led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.

Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or "wildcat capitalism" (as if we actually have a pure free market!).

Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: "Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk."

Doesn't that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn't that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn't the federal government shown that the "many" who "believed they were guaranteed by the federal government" were in fact correct?

Then come the scare tactics. If we don't give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary "the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet." Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.

It's the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.

The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.

F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks' manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:

Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.

To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end... It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.

The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.

The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?

Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people.

The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you're supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.

I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.

H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.

In liberty,

Ron Paul