It is to delay the collapse. Preferably at least long enough for the hedge fund pirates and investment banks to jettison more of the problem on the taxpayers and 401k investors as the insiders cash out.

Very few people are willing to admit how close we were to a compete meltdown a couple weeks ago. The Fed intervention was very deliberate and precise to stop an immediate unwinding via creating breathing room.

The bailout has alrady begun. The taxpayers are already buying crap loans from shaky companies as a reward for their nonexistent risk underwriting. The discount window game probably saved Countrywide, at least for now. Money Market Mutual Funds were next in the crapper when the CP market seized up. Much closer to meltdown tan many even realize.

I find this bold faced hypocrisy tremendously insulting. After suffering decades of free market bullshit from these assholes, they are running to Uncle Sugar hat in hand.

How soon until they start calling for us to privatize social security again?

First you bail out Countrywide ostensibly so they continue funding mortgages for the Hoi Polloi, and then in typical Republican fashion the money ends up with the big-wigs.

I suspect one reason Bush garnered more votes than Kerry in 2004 was because people were making a lot on their houses. Once people stop making money on their houses, and actually start losing--as we saw in 1991-2--you get a changing of the guard. So if the GOP expects to continue its reign, they'll have to actually try to reverse the housing slide. But this is probably impossible: too many are in deep caca with their shady loans, and real estate moves very slowly. It would take a public inflation-with the moral authority of war to do it, and that would for sure spook our Chinese and Japanese creditors. Already the dollar is at a thirty-year low--not much room to manoeuver.