Just to throw it out there (from current census figures):

$700 Billion =

$2293 / person
$3211 / adult
$6295 / household

We are talking about more than your usual token "stimulus" check. 6 grand ought to cover most mortgage payments I've ever seen. I suppose the point was to call attention to the huge amount of money we are talking about, and that the proposal represented a stimulus check to the bankers... not that the concept works in the long run, but hell, may as well give it to us to deposit!

The entire idea certainly misses the point. I'd suggest that this is happening as Bush's swan song for a reason. Obama is wrong about a lot of things, but he was right when he said that this represents the pinnacle of a failed economic philosophy. That philosophy is the one represented by the republican revolution (and every figurehead democrat since, including Obama), but conceived long before. It says that debt is as inconsequential as life is in the military -- it's all just paper. It proposes Capitalism as a system of government rather than economy. It was propagated by people who believed not that it represented sound economy, but that it would lead directly to what we see today. It is the final weeding out of competition, allowing the Morgan's, and the Rockefeller's of the world to cinch the nooses around our necks.

We can call it nationalization in this case rather than corporate cronyism; but they are one and the same. Where do you think our politicians work their day jobs? Either way, it's the opposite of the free market utopia that many conservative supporters were looking for: it is Fascism. Half of our congress is giddy as schoolgirls at the thought of handing the keys to the treasury over to the private sector (or vice-versa). The markets are groaning while the induced final hemorrhage of monopolization and consolidation takes place. The outcome is global in its reach and is likely inevitable with or without Uncle Sam's bonus dollars. US taxes are based on Federal Reserve policies phonier than Andrew Fastow's books. The reality is that the bailout proposal represented more than the total tax revenue of 1970, and almost 1/3 of today's, but they may as well have asked for 700 trillion -- it's just paper!

They don't care about the chaos; in fact they welcome it. The destruction leaves even less hands in the cookie jar. We've seen this coming for years, and I don't believe there is a political solution within the framework that any "first world" country offers today. Massive revolution is the alternative.