Dr. Batra made a good analogy. Imagine treating a patient without knowing the cause of the problem? The bailout seems as chaotic as the war against "ism" and just as paniced-- without clear thinking. Chaos benefits the "beer ad" 30 second campaign advertising or the ADHD news formats, but doesn't allow reasoned analysis or informed discussion. Even talk radio has a disjointed feel with the short telephone calls, understandable for emotional venting, but I do appreciate Tim from Detroit, or Ralph from Colorado Springs, and would love to hear longer discussions with them in order to normalize an intellectual discussion. The adversarial talks with the opposition probably does motiviate more calls, but I think it would be good to model intelligence as well.
I appreciate Thoms explanations of the shadow, unknown, unregulated markets. I am not clear on how that impacted or was impacted by gambling mortgages, other than unregulated non-governmental businesses moved much of the money from these high stakes obligations into the derivative markets.
McClatchy had an interesting article about delving through the numbers of the "subprime" mess. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/53802.html McCaltchy also echoed one of Thom's points, that the Chinese aren't doing anything to help and are sitting on over a trillion dollars of US government bonds. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/53724.html I would love to know what Ravi believes the consequence of China's actions and the impact of a decline in US consumerism. Also, aren't some of the richest people in the world Chinese? So why weren't they in the hedge funds and pressuring their government for help?
So much has transpired in the past eight years, any single scandal of which would have disgusted the nation just ten years ago, that we seemed to be too overwhelmed and fatigued to even recall all of it. It might be worth spending an hour just rolling through the past eight years of corruption, bungling, theft and distain. I think that would be especially effective because the supporters of McCain seem as trapped by hubris as the political brand with which they identify.
So here is some poetry:
"Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Falls from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts...they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun; but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric..."
from Edna St. Vincent Millay, Huntsman, What Quarry
in Cleopatra's Nose, Essays on the Unexpected

We now have the loom, it's called the world wide web,