In response to this comment:

> it is the liberals telling us how we have to keep the big dogs alive
> because the little dogs rely on them???

I consider the recent round of bailouts to be neither the result of liberals (or democrats) nor of conservatives (republicans)

As I recall the course of events, initially there were failures in some huge financial institutions such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The Bush administration came to their rescue and turned them back into public companies. This reverse privatization was the first symptom of things being very wrong.

After that we had problems with big banks such as the Bank of America, UBS Payne Webber, Wachovia and eventually the big one, J.P. Morgan. The Federal Reserve opened the cash window and let out about 400 billion in loans to keep banks afloat.

George W. Bush convened a high level meeting with Ben Bernanke (Chairman of the Federal Reserve) and Henry Paulson (Secretary of the Treasury). They drafted a proposal for the bailout. The bill went to congress and it was narrowly defeated because of opposition from both Democrat and Republican representatives.

George W. Bush convened a second meeting. This time he also called John MacCain and Barack Obama. They interrupted their campaigns and in the meeting they redrafted the bill with stipulations for continuity of policy after the election. Meaning that regardless of who was elected the bailout would go forward.

The bill went to the senate and it was passed to everyone surprise. The bill was expected to fail because there was opposition from both liberal and conservative senators.

Democrats charged that the bill was nothing more than using tax dollars to prop up banks, while ignoring important needs of the working public such as education and health care. Republicans charged that the involvement of the government in sustaining private companies was a form of socialism and that free market forces should let the system find equilibrium and that meant letting banks fail.

The bill was drafted by both Democrats and Republicans during the Bush administration, and it was opposed by both Democrats and Republicans.

While all this was going on, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Swiss Central Bank, the Central Bank of Sweden, the Central Bank of Russia, the Central Bank fo the People's Republic of China and many other central banks drafted similar bailouts and opened their cash windows. There were unprecedented lowerings of interest rates.

This was a case where capitalists, communists and socialists of different colors and stances worked together to pump cash into the world's financial system and avert another meltdown that threatened to be worse than the crash of 1928.

The bailout is a phenomenon that started with the Federal Reserve in the US, but eventually spread itself around the world.

If all the cash that was released into the system fails to revive the economy, and the banks fail to repay their loans, there will be a lot of finger pointing to see who is to blame. Barack Obama will take the brunt of it, because he is the president. One would hope that John MacCain, George W. Bush, Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson would take the blame too. So should Gordon Brown and Mervyn King (Governor of the Bank of England), and for that matter all the other politicians and economists around the world who took part in what has the potential to become the biggest economic disaster in modern history.