On the $700 federal bailout of the financial industry...

I don't know why George W Bush and Nancy Pelosi should sound so surprised at the collapse of the $700 billion bailout plan put forth by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to help prop up the financial industry.

This plan remains a hard sell to the public. The only supposedly most compelling argument from Paulson is that, if the federal government does not put taxpayer money on the line, Armageddon is at hand and the whole industry is going to collapse. As some House rep rightly pointed out, there is no plan B; there is no healthy debate on the subject; there's no measurement of success (or failure); there is no reassurance that the plan would work. All that Bush, Paulson and Bernanke can conjure up is that, we have to throw more good money to these bad investments. I'm appalled that Paulson that he had even initially resisted the call for curb on executive payout in the failing firms, noting that these executives would decline to join. I'd join, sure, let them fail, and let them see what the alternatives might be.

Sometimes I wonder if high-minds like Paulson is so wrapped up in their own worlds to think out-of-the-box. The Bush administration has only helped by pushing for more deregulation for the past eight years, only to see the walls closed in on them now, and that in order to defy another horrondeous legacy (of another meltdown economy in 2008 after stock market implosion in 2000) under Bush's watch. Unlike 9/11, this is well within the control of our government, and yet Bush and those stupid GOP's let Wall Strett have a free hand to run amok.

I know it's not going to be easy to have the financial industry collapse at our door steps. The writedown of more than $400 billion by various banks, bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, hasty buyout of Bear Stearns, sellout of Merrill Lynch, bailout of AIG, and more, are just part of the painful process for the market to readjust itself back to some kind of normalcy. If the GOP and like-minded Democrats believe so firmly in the magic of the invisible hands of the free market, they should have let the invisible work this mess out, no matter how painful and tough it would be.