I'm becoming more and more pessimistic. The ruling elites of the US are a bunch of culturally illiterate, thieving crooks, whose only talents are creating catastrophic financial bubbles, stealing from the taxpayer, and starting illegal and unwinnable land wars in Asia. They've driven this country into a ditch, so it's not likely they'll spend the $700 billion on where it should be spent - recapitalizing the bank system, then taking over failed institutions, firing bankers, and weeding out the bad loans.

Right now, the problem is that the interbank loan system is frozen. Noone is lending to anyone else. Nouriel Roubini has the best all-round analysis of the mess we're in:

http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/

So when do the dozen of us on this site that said this was a stupid idea get to say "I told you so"?

When the world economy crashes, and that may not be the best time to deliver a hardy and snide "I told you so", you'll probably be too busy getting robbed at gunpoint by hungry militias.

i have relatives that practically got wiped out on their retirment funds as things stand like they aren't going to get pretty much any money for a while.

Yea, probably a bad idea anyway.

To put into prospective what 850B is... go here:

http://www.federalbudget.com/

Look at the last line on that chart, and triple it.

Goodbye, Dollar. You always were my favorite currency.

wow, that treasury website was interesting. over 400 billion dollars of tax money spent a year paying interest to the people holding the US's debt. That's insane.

Me!

I thought I read on factcheck.org that the original bill would put the 700 billion pretty much under the control of one person, though I can't find it now. Does anyone know about this and was it rectified in the bill that was passed?

Secondly, I now a lot of you Europeans will hate me for this, but I think Europe needs to throw some money our way. If the US economy really takes a turn for the worse, the EU will get dragged down with it. Same goes for Canada, Mexico, probably Japan and other parts of Asia. We owe China like 1 trillion dollars because of government bonds and you know they are going to want to get paid.

But the part about this that I don't like is that, as mentioned, the national debt is over 10 trillion. And with Iraq and Afghanistan still going on and the baby boomers retiring we have three options. Significantly raise taxes to break even or have a surplus, raise taxes so the deficit is small, or leave taxes as they are and really start racking up the debt. None are good options.

If we continue to create deficits our options are continuing creating money by taking it out of the treasury, which owns 40% of the public debt (as in the government owes the money to itself) and creating inflation, or getting money from private banks or other governments and that isn't good because they will expect regular payments and interest.

Makes me kind of glad the state I live in has posted surpluses the last few years and owes no debt (except the "future debt" to retiring government workers, but we got money stashed away and are stashing more away for that).

And in case you couldn't tell, I am not please that 700 billion in tax payer money is going to be used to bail out bad businessmen, but I think that if that is what it takes for this to get fixed, or start to get fixed, then let must be done be done. There was an article in the newspaper today that a company was going to be bought and the government was going to pitch in 2 billion to help the buyers buy them and I think it was Wachovia jumped in and used their own money to buy it up instead. Hopefully more companies will do that so that only a fraction (and hopefully small fraction at that) of the 700 billion actually gets used.

Not sure if you're counting me in that but if you aren't you can up your count to a baker's dozen =P