a simple question: why don't we let AIG, fannie may, and every other big company that got in trouble, because of their own poor investment and business decisions, fail?
i'm not an economist, but i keep reading about the "crisis" and while i often see economists and others say that Very Bad Things (tm) will happen, they never say what those terrible things are.
perhaps we should just focus on mitigating the Very Bad Things instead.
will the massive failures destroy homeowners' ability to obtain or repay mortgages? then enact an assistance program to deal with that problem directly.
wipe out retirement funds? put in something like FDIC insurance. maybe you could even index it with age, so that you have more protection against catastrophic losses as you get closer to 67.
wipe out jobs? that one's tougher. maybe it calls for something really creative, like eliminating any tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas (yeah, there'll be tariff and other foreign relations problems). but i would need to see some convincing proof that investment companies create jobs. i know the suppressed mortgage rates (held down by the "invisible" hand of the free market) artificially stimulated the real estate market and related industries. aren't those jobs already gone? and if jobs really is the problem, how about a new deal? last time i checked, we had failing levies in louisiana, unsafe bridges over the mississippi, and other desperately needed infrastructure improvements. (heck, why not give out stationary bicycles, plug them into the power grid, and pay people for the electricity they produce? earn some case, lose some weight, improve your health, and fight global warming all at once.)
what am i missing here? i can't help but think that everyone afraid of Very Bad Things must simply put corporate welfare ahead of individual welfare, or still believes in "trickle down" economics that should have been discredited in the 1920s.