THINK WE CAN .com

…that is not the question.  With what pail shall we bail is what we must ask—it’s hard to say how much of the $700 billion might have leaked out of the badly perforated bucket first presented by Secretary Paulson.  But thanks to the protests of the citizens of Main Street, it looks like we have a chance for a bailout with greater oversight, transparency and regulation.

It was odd how many of our financial wizards, pundits and politicians, after finally admitting to the monster of a mess we are in, told the rest of us that we just didn’t “get” the bailout.  They vehemently asserted that we had to let a couple of guys take control of 700 billion of our tax dollars (or maybe $2 trillion).  And we had to do the deal in about 10 hours or the sky would fall on our ignorant little noggins.  Can you imagine, two guys wanted to take control of half the U.S. budget in a day or so?  Well, thankfully, cooler heads prevailed.

Those would be the heads of Main Street, as we demonstrated our extreme dislike of the bailout with untold calls and e-mails to our leaders.

The financial Masters Of The Universe tried to browbeat the rest of us with the fact that we didn’t understand the intricacies and details of the now infamous, ten-hour, trillion dollar bailout.  What those folks failed to understand was that the vast majority of Americans had reached the boiling point with the people who caused this mess and the leaders who allowed it to happen.

Our financial experts should now realize that Main Street knows a good bit about the bailout and the economy and we are tired of throwing gigantic sums of good money after a Niagara of bad.  Just how many con jobs, stupid decisions and low-class thieves in high-class places is one society supposed to endure?

Main Street didn’t need to know the details of this terrible situation—all they had to do was smell the all-engulfing stench of greed flowing across our land like some bizarre plague.  This ability to sniff out stupidity is called common sense.

I think Main Street is now concerned with what happens after the trillions of bailout dollars are allocated and the fuss over this crisis dies down.  There is little doubt that if Corporate America is left to their usual devices, another batch of thieves will surface out of the ashes of this stupendous debacle.  And folks, if we don’t re-engineer the critical portions of our economy, the brand new generation of bad guys will dream up a brand new bag of tricks that may bury us for good.  We can’t allow that to happen.  We must take back control of our society.

Now, we do have some good news if the bailout is passed; while our lines of credit will begin to unclog immediately, most of the bailout funds can’t be spent until after the inauguration.  Until then, we can find ways to advise our leadership that we expect them to recognize what has caused this situation and do the work they were elected to do:  They must engineer, regulate and oversee the critical portions of our economy that were handed over to corporate America some 30 years ago.

We have a chance to pull out of our economic quagmire if our leaders will apply themselves to creating needed controls over health care, finance, energy, education and defense, etc.  Simply put, Corporate America has become far too powerful. Our leaders committed a grave mistake when they privatized critical portions of the U.S. Economy.

Unfortunately, we have bigger problems than Wall Street is admitting.  Total bailout costs will run closer to $2 trillion than $700 billion.  In a recent CNBC interview, Bill Gross, the head of PIMCO and one of the leading money managers in the world, advised us that an extra $500 billion will be required to “re-capitalize” our banking system.  He is saying that $700 billion does not address the cash-on-hand requirements banks need for daily operations.  Also, we just signed up to lend $25 to $50 billion to our automobile industry for their bailout.  A number of other extraordinary expenditures and the usual under-estimating of all of this will add hundreds of billions more.

This column is being written for one other reason:  To advise readers I intend to make my primary focus any bailout and subsequent economic matters for the next few months.  I cannot imagine another subject that will impact all of us more than what our leaders do with our economy after we hand them another two thousand, thousand million tax dollars.  We must hold their feet to the fire of change—surely we now know that privatized business as usual will equate to U.S. economic disaster.

Most people have little time to keep up with all the important developments in this matter—they are too busy feeding their families.  In my newspaper columns and this blog, I will provide economic information and insights from, and Internet links to, some of the best financial experts in the world.  Hopefully, my interpretations will add a little clarity to the mix.

So, I leave you with the following information to set the stage for future columns.  Recent economic indicators tell us quite clearly that our problems are deep-seated--and worsening.  The bailout will not change that fact.  Our housing difficulties will extend at least through 2009 as our next round of mortgage foreclosures (Pay Option Arms) kick in.  With unemployment claims steadily rising, factory orders and manufacturing dramatically declining, some experts contend we have now entered what may become our deepest recession.  This situation may take a couple years to play out.

How it plays out will be determined by our leaders.  We citizens of Main Street now know we can influence their decisions.  We do not want them to revert to the very operations that created this crisis.  We must continue to pay close attention until proper reforms are established--it's our future that's being created--at warp speed.