I agree with you, but I agree for different reasons.

My opposition to the bailout has nothing to do with if it will work or not. it has everything to do with if our government should have the authority.

I am not a fan of torture, but it works. For me, the end does not justify the means. Trying to stop evil in the world by being evil is not a solution.

I see the same thing here. Socializing the economy is not the answer. Even if it works on a limited scale, is it worth what we give up in principle? I don't think so.

I will take the pain of a recession to hold onto the freedoms that my constitution gives me. I am not willing to give them up for a quick fix. The reason everyone does not think this way is simple:

"the problem with all this opposition is simply because the vast majority of people simply don't understand the problem--at all."

It's not the problem of economics I am worried about.

So lets throw out a hypothetical situation - the economy does collapse due to this bailout not being passed and the government loses out big time (Lets say $7Tril). Would you find this prefferable to the government trying to prevent this problem and losing $700B?

(Both numbers are pulled out of my arse, I have no idea what a depression would cost the government and with this deal losing all 700B would require some extreme incompetence.)

Yes.

First off, the Great Depression was caused my the government not following the constitution, and this economic crisis is created for the same reasons, but let's not go there for the purpose of this discussion.

We are broke. We have no money. The way we deal with that, is just make more up. This is a bad idea. It devalues all the money, and causes inflation. This means the poor get poorer. Who cares if banks lend money if no one can afford to pay for a loan.

We got into this mess because the government tried to pull up the lower class through questionable means. If the bailout happens, the government is going to punish the lower class through questionable means.

The market went up today. A day the government did nothing. If we were really in the economic position to have a great depression, the market would continue to fall. We are no where close to what it would take to enter a depression. But we are back on economics again....

It's hard to talk about an economic problem without talking about economics. 

a new bailout is being voted by the senate tomorrow - they include tax cuts to attract Republicans to vote for the bailout.

$700 billion is 25% of federal budget!!!!
and
""Hundreds of billions of dollars are going to bail out FOREIGN INVESTORS. They know it, they demanded it, and the bill has been carefully written to make sure that can happen." - Brad Sherman , D-California"

billions will not stay in the U.S.!

You are exactly the population I'm worried about--people who make up their minds without knowing what the "bailout" is even about, or the arguments that go behind them.  Your arguments are pretty much all off the mark.

It's a complex issue, and I'm not blaming the system.  It's a democracy, and the Congress vote actually shows that the system is working.  That's a good thing.

However, leaders are also supposed to lead.  And our nation's leaders have lost all credibility.  People ignore them and compare the bailout to possibly another iraq.  That's how little trust there is.

And why should you?  Paulson is the former CEO of the most successful firm on Wall Street, Bernanke is an academian, and Bush of course has no credibility.

So in addition to the fact that the credit tightening has yet to become apparent to many of the folks, I can understand why folks just oppose the bailout out of principle.

I just hope people can form more informed decisions--but with an issue this complex, the only way is for people to have more trust.

And sadly, $700 billion isn't going to avert a recession.  And then people's trust in our leadership goes down even more.  The good thing is, hopefully, we recoup most of the $700 billion back, which would bring back some of the trust.  But that would be years down the road.

How do you figure that?

Don't worry, he makes a lot of claims that he masquerades as facts.

I am not going to say it was an issue of constitutionality or not, even though some of FDR's policies were rules unconstitutional. The cause of the GD was an inflationary boom that could no longer be sustained. With that being said, the GD was prolonged because of government intevention.