The first issue is to characterize the Treasury Plan as a bailout. It is not that at all.

Implications: With all due respect to the author, Washington is not the appropriate President to site as the authority that foresaw the current financial and economic issues we are facing today. Nor would many other Presidents be good examples. Not, Kennedy, nor Carter, nor Regan or even Clinton. In point of fact, each of these Presidents had no idea of where our financial system was moving, nor the implications of what "innovative financial engineering" was producing in the 20th and 21st century in which America lead the world. While Secretary Paulson has done a great job in creating a program that would address the needs of the global markets facing this potential meltdown of the US financial system, he is perhaps the worst "dog and pony show" man ever to have had to make a presentation to a not so intelligent audience.

Analysis:  The current situation has little to do with bailing out Wall Street. In point of fact, Wall Street as anyone defined it up until three weeks ago cannot be bailed out becThe current situation has little to do with bailing out Wall Street. In point of fact, Wall Street as anyone defined it up until three weeks ago cannot be bailed out because Wall Street is finished, dead and soon to be buried.

Those who want to find the proper pain and retribution should rely comfortably on the greatest group of individuals to ever have taken up the issues of "retribution for wrongs done, real or created" the lawyers who will take this up on behalf of the "innocents" on Main Street who everyone seems to be interested in protecting.

The number and level of class action law suits to come from this debacle will clog the courts for decades.

Congressional hearings and sub-committee investigations will go on for the total term of the next President and beyond.

Wall Street has paid the ultimate price by it's death and will continue to be punished well beyond the official burial that if anyone was paying attention, happened one week ago with the conversions of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to bank holding companies.

So, Main Street, please, find satisfaction that you will no longer have to deal with or be abused by the fat cats on Wall Street.

But, as I have always said to any finger pointer, look at the thumb and the other fingers wrapped around the one pointing because they all point back at you.

Sadly, Main Street does not want to hear it but the truth is, everyone had more to do with these excesses than Wall Street.

Main Street became addicted to credit, credit of any kind devised by whomever in whatever form just as long as they could get their "consumer high" and buy and spend on whatever they wanted.

Noone cared how much the instrument creators or marketers were making, just as long as the supply of credit was continually available and easy to find and obtain. Right down to not even having to prove to anyone that they could pay it back at any time whether it was a 5 year ARM or a 15 year HELOC.

Now, Main Street wants to say that they need to be protected from these Wall Street fat cats, who, totally against their will and without any knowledge whatsoever, forced them to get mortgages for houses they could never afford, had no downpayment to add to purchasing and then forced them further to take out even more unwanted credit by leveraging that house even further with an equity line of credit with the "teaser rate" of zero percent.

I could go on, but, hopefully the readers get the picture.

I don't think that George Washington had any concept of that type of Governmental assistance, call it whatever you want, to American business, banking or the citizens themselves.

Nor did any of the other Presidents, including, unfortunately our totally disengaged, uninformed and fully out of the loop, President Bush.

So, let's get to the root of this issue and the "Plan".

The root lies in a 1999 Clinton piece of legislation that basically tore the controls and protections off Fannie Mae, one of the GSE's determined to be a vehicle for increasing a voting demographic that would provide a new and eternal majority to any Democratic candidate for anything.

This legislation required Fannie Mae to lower credit standards for home purchases, precisely so that people who could not afford to become homeowners could become homeowners. Not just homes of modest means, rather, any home, anywhere and for virtually any price.

Higher limits for Fannie Mae purchased loans, no down payments and virtually no credit score to keep anyone out of the market who wanted to have their "piece of the American dream"-- a house!!

Before going on, I would like to know who managed to convert the true American Dream of equal opportunity to earn a living, obtain an education, speak freely and worship as they want to this relatively insignificant replacement of "home ownership"? Would that person please identify him or her self for us?  You are the real culpert and the one all of us should look to tar and feather and run out of town on a rail.

Next, in 2001 after the attacks of September 11th, the Federal Reserve move to drop interest rates to a point where getting money was not only easier than getting a pure drink of water but, at a cost that made it easy to ignore the simple idea of having to pay for that credit on a monthly basis.

Finally, the last and most mortal piece of legislation came in 2002 when it became possible for any financial institution to lever itself and it's assets (for Main Streeters who don't understand that terminology, read that as the money they had in their pockets!!) by a factor of 40 to 1!

Do any of you Main Streeters understand that? In simplisitic terms that means that if you were a bank or a financial institution you could lend $40 dollars for every $1 dollar you have and earn interest, fees and whatever else you can put on a piece of paper to be signed by anyone with a pen who could make an X or actually write their name, even if they did not have a job or any prospect of ever paying you back.

So, if you could only earn 5% on $1 dollar before this date, now you could earn 5% on $40 dollars!.

Never mind the fact that if only a very small percentage of those people making up that $40 dollar amount of loans you made finally reached a point where they could not pay the 5% interest or have any prospect of paying back the $1 dollar they borrowed, a new factor was occuring in that these lenders had protection through a new type of alchemy called a Credit Default Obligation (CDO- a term to hold onto as these are part of the "toxic waste" that is now the nuclear cloud over the financial systems of the world and that threaten to make the actual Cherynobly look like a picnic ground for families) that basically were pieces of paper issued by other lending institutions and insurance companies and just about anyone else who could get any sort of a credit rating out of those "guardians" of the financial system and who were handing out ratings faster than politicians hand out promises.

These CDO's then became part of an asset class that made up, hold onto your seats, part of the base against which these same lending institutions could lever on this incredible 40 to 1 basis.

As long as some of the very same institutions who created these instruments were willing to buy them from anyone else who was creating them or through the marketing groups of these institutions could find hedge fund managers who needed exhorbitant returns to justify to their investors why they should be earning hunderds of millions of dollars in bonuses, would keep on buying them or even governments in foreign lands were willing to buy them sensing a great return from the "financial capital of the world" as people love to say with what some even perceived to be a tacit or implicit guarantee from the US Government, then things were great and all was well in the world.

Main Street loved Wall Street and Wall Street loved any Street, no matter the name just as long that street was financed and leveraged.

Now to the real death virus for everyone, the real Extinguishing Life Event that did away with the dinosaurs and is now bringing that same fate potentially to Wall Street, Main Street, Mao Street, Trische Street or Putin Street--- MARK TO MARKET RULES OF ACCOUNTING.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, here is the true culprit and harbinger of death that has been stalking us all.

By these rules, the value of any financial institution or listed or non-listed entity is partially determined and worse yet their credit rating is fixed in accordance to, the value of all instruments that comprise their asset and capital base, by a daily value obtained by the holder as if they were going to sell them that day. I have simplified it here so that our Main Street friends can grasp this rule more firmly in their banner holding hands of signs saying "save us we didn't know" and look squarely into the abyss they are hanging over at the moment.


Things were great and all was well, until the first morning or afternoon when someone had the audacity to say they would not pay 100 cents on the dollar for one of those pieces of paper.

If we can find that day and that moment, we will be able to fix the exact and precise time of the introduction of the death dealing virus. We most probably would even be able to assign a name or names of those involved in that act.

But, we don't need that at the moment. So, I continue...

At that very moment, cold chills began to run up and down the spines of Wall Streeters, they knew what had happened and what the ultimate outcome was going to be.

Calls went out to everyone inside Wall Street and along certain streets in the Beltway. They were terrified to let it out to Main Street and worked hard between themselves to prevent it from ever getting out.

Why you ask? It is because with that action, there was a "write-down" of a portion of that institutions value meaning that the $40 dollars they lent for the $1 dollar they had would no require that the either replace the value differential of that particular piece of paper that now noone was willing to buy at 100 cents on the dollar to whatever they had as an offer. To make it short, last week, the values had reached 0 cents on the dollar for well over $15 to $17 TRILLION dollars.

Now can you grasp a bit of why Paulson and Bernanke have some stutter in their voices, a bit of hesitancy to their presentations? Why, they are anxious (a generous portrayl of what they must really be feeling) to get something done sooner rather than later in political timing.

But, indulge me a bit longer, I am getting to the close here.

For a time it was contained and like any cancer, fooled the patient and the oncologists alike that it had been dealt with (without the surgery or any of the effects of surgery) by a quick and early diagnosis and swift raditation therapy.

Things returned to normal and both Wall Street and the Beltway were satisfied in themselves for having saved the patient and the patient need not know exactly what he had nor that it just might come back in a more aggressive manner requiring more serious treatment, possibly chemotherapy and the hair loss, vomiting and all that this treatment method will bring with it.

Sadly and predictably, this did come back because the people on Main Street just kept asking for more and demanding it at even better terms but, as much as these suppliers wanted to provide it to them, they couldn't get the product as easily or in a much quantity any more.

All of them had been experiencing exactly the same or greater write-downs of their values, some were on the brink of losing their credit ratings and most had lost their ability to "grow the product" any longer.

In short, they ran out of time, funds and access to funds. In truth, they all stopped believing and trusting each other. Worse yet, many of the others around the globe that they were able to get this "liquidity" from (the main feedstock of their production machines) was gone. Plus, anyone that had it was not willing to provide it because the ratings had dropped and some very able and nimble guys called hedge fund managers had found a way to really profit from all of this through something called "short selling". I am not going to explain that to anyone at this time, that is Main Streets next semesters class.

But, suffice it to say, with a smile on their faces, billions and billions of dollars in their pockets and a system that really believed that their actions were a vital part of "The Market", they pushed the values of any institutions stock towards the brink of collapse. They will tell you that like the sharks and vultures of nature, they were doing all of us a service by killing the sick and weak but they were not happy to stop there. They went looking for anyone whose share values were above $1 so they could get as big of a drop towards zero (read that $0.00) so that their profit could be as high as possible for performing this much needed service to the markets and all of our pension funds, 401 K plans and childrens mutual funds.

Their actions were monumentally successful and now we no longer have to be abused by, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Washington Mutual, AIG, soon we will be rid of Wachovia, possibly Wells Fargo, why even Citibank could be driven out of our lives and businesses.

So, now to the point. Exhausted I know but, I hope you will appreciate the rest.

In keeping with it's true mandate, the Government (of George Washington et. al.) now has no choice but to step in for "IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST" and "FOR THE COMMON GOOD OF IT'S CITIZENS" and fulfill the need.

Stabilize and re-establish the financial system and credit markets of the Nation. It has no choice. There is noone with a checkbook large enough or who can live long enough to deal with this problem.

It has gone beyond infecting one entity, well beyond Wall Street and in point of fact has now become a global pandemic because this "toxic waste" is in the atmosphere and is falling down all over the planet and everyone above ground will be exposed to it. In truth, there is not a deep enough underground bunker anyone can get to or dig in the time remaining.

This is about to hit, and hit it will, as certain as the asteroid strike was 65 million years ago that was the "Extinguishing Life Event" for all at that period of time, no street is safe and noone will escape the impact and effects of this "strike".

So, my fellow Americans as any of those Presidents would have said to us prior to informing all of us on all of our streets, it is either accept the facts and act or, accept them and don't act, which is contrary to their oaths of office as well, we have to act.

We have to enact a Plan. A Plan of rescue and stabilization. If not, we will not be able to plan on how to avoid this in the future or even, as some will need, bring the culprits to justice.

$700 billion dollars is no small sum but, the value for that overwhelms any arguments against spending it.

First of all, assets will be acquired in exchange for it so at the beginnning noone is out any money.

If held long enough and managed properly, these  assets will have a value, perhaps even greater than what is paid for them and as they are orderly disposed of, there will be a lesser cost and perhaps a profit.

But, those are not the reasons to implement this plan or a form of it.

It is for the survival of eveyone, living on any street on this planet from a financial and economic event that noone is prepared to deal with and many still do not understand or have the interest or sadly, the capacity to understand.

Which now brings me to the final aspect of Presidents and leaders alike.

To understand and accept the facts and the dangers they present for the people the serve and the Nation they represent and once at that understanding, taking the actions necessary to " PROTECT AND SERVE THE COMMON INTERESTS AND GOOD OF THE NATION".

Any one of those Presidents would agree with this and would tell you from their respective places of history, we have to do this and we have to do it together because together we hang or we hang individually together.