Which leads me to my second thought: President Bush told us last night this was at least partially about providing capital so that banks could make loans. Seems to me, the banks in question were making loans that got us into this mess in the first place. So why not take that $700 billion and build a new bank? Don't give the money to these failing banks that made bad decisions, but find some new bankers to do the job right and get them started with some new capital. Then build in a plan where said bankers use their profits to buy back the government interest in their corporation over time, slowly becoming an independent entity. That seems to me like it would get the capital necessary for driving the economy back into circulation and would give the government oversight into how things were run to avoid a similar problem in the future.
I'm guessing I'm highly naive about how these things work, but it is frustrating to hear that the options are to either bail out the fuck-ups or the global economy goes boom. Surely there are some other options.
