The bailout is about to get much, much bigger

Justin, would you care to weigh in on the brouhaha over at Swampland? (link).

Scherer seems not to understand what privatization means. He claims this is evidence McCain doesn't want to privatize SS:

McCain adviser Mark Salter expands on what McCain supports: "He's not for raising taxes, he has said – not privatization of social security, but a small percentage, even at a bond fund, would yield greater return over time than the government gets."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that what privatization is? Investing some of your SS money into a fund of some kind? And given the beating that AAA subprime-backed bonds have gotten, isn't that just the kind of risk that many criticize about SS privatization?

Thanks. Please do weigh in on this.

Sigh. Don't these people know there's a financial crisis going on!

Salter's statement sounds a lot like the kind of privatization Bush was pushing. McCain has at times over the years endorsed that as well. His official campaign stance is to create some kind of new investment accounts outside of Social Security. Which Obama wants too, by the way.

RTC style bail-out is too small. Think depression era...FDR style project!!

Plus, I see another stimulus package. Think infrastructure on an interstate construction level.

Bailout after bailout, is there an end to this seemingly endless game?

The $85 billion rescue plan has sent the Wall Street on a wild and mad roller coaster run. Up and down, down and up, the near 5% change each time gets everyone on the nerve. The sad thing is the end point of the roller ride is always lower than the starting point, in fact often much lower. The worst is looming over the horizon.

The US government is in huge debt, ever sinking on a gigantic sandpit. The magnitude of the deficit cannot be easily grasped by the uninitiated. Only Americans can save their beloved nation, they can do it partly by starting to live a simpler and less extravagant life. Time is running out fast.
(Tan Boon Tee

The current bailout frenzy is completely ridiculous since the markets are working perfectly. A free-market economy automatically compensates for poor management, bad investments, fraud, etc... by turning negative as our markets have done. The bailouts negate the proper functioning markets which in turn will cause rampant poor conduct and eventual collapse of the markets AND nations. This junk they call securities consisting of poorly approved mortgages was bound to fail from the beginning and bailing them out will cause the housing market to crumble with inflated values, increased defaults, rampant refis, etc... everything which caused this problem initially. We MUST allow the markets to operate independent of our intervention or risk complete collapse of our nation. By eliminating risk via bailouts, we create a wide open anything goes scenario AKA CHAOS!!!