Here is the Cliff Notes version of the economic disaster.

1. The banks and investment houses made up a bunch of products and sank their investors' money into them.

2. The banks and investment houses couldn't convince you to buy those products.

3. The banks and investment houses got the government to FORCE you to buy those products.

Any questions?

So, all those bad assets are being moved off of their books and onto a gigantic cash sink run by the US Government and paid for by YOU. Estimates of the total bailout just for this latest plan are a trillion dollars. The prior bailouts of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, etc. are another half trillion. You know the saying, a trillion here and a trillion there and soon you are talking some real money!

Basically, Wall Street got into the same liquidity crisis as ordinary Americans. Ordinary Americans got a check for $600. Wall Street gets trillions. Go figure.

So, what will those banks and financial institutions do with the money magically reappearing in their accounts?

Well, they probably will go back to doing what they have been doing all along. They have no reason to rethink their policies and practices since they don't have to pay the price for their failures. Indeed, the bailouts are a disincentive to learn and evolve.

So, it's back to endless credit card offers and high-risk loans and over-leveraging, and in the middle of this New York casino the women and booze will continue to flow in copious amounts, obscuring a simple truth. As McCain admitted the other day, the entire US economy rests on the ability of US workers to earn a good living and pay all the bills (and taxes). And those same corporations whose stock is in play have been sending those high paying manufacturing jobs to other countries, aided by generous tax incentives by the US Government that now proposes to shackle you to the losses incurred by those corporations. The US economy is a pyramid scheme, and Bush's plan just spread the pyramid out along a wider foundation, but that foundation is already full of cracks. If there are no jobs, then there is nothing to tax to pay the bills. In the absence of real manufacturers to invest in, Wall Street will loan that trillion dollars out to any fly-by-night operator who promises a quick return.

The fact is that this added infusion of cash is going to put tremendous inflationary pressure on the dollar. It's not like the money that Wall Street lost vanished. It's still out there, just not where Wall Street wanted it to be. Adding trillions more in liquidity makes all those dollars actually worth less. Prices will go up. Already commodities have started up on expectations of too much cash chasing too few goods and services. This in turn will accelerate the trade imbalance, motivating foreign nations to start getting out of dollar reserves. Foreign investors may start pulling out of the US markets rather than see their investments increase in dollar value but decrease in real worth.

That trillion (actually trillions) has to come from someplace. Maybe government will cut spending, so goodbye to jobs, which cuts the tax base, and reduces retail purchasing. Maybe more homes will foreclose. Or the government will keep spending where it is and just raise taxes. So, families have to cut back, buy fewer clothes, maybe skip needed medical care; certainly they won't be buying any new flat-panel TV sets any time soon. So, retail stores start to close, more people out of work, the tax base shrinks, more companies go out of business. So no matter how you slice and dice it, this bailout doesn't solve any problems. It doesn't bring NEW money into the system, it just shifts the debt around to make things look good for the election, but it does NOT really solve the underlying problems.

The fact of the matter is that Bush's plan is at best a patch, to make it look like the government is doing something positive between now and the elections. But it doesn't really change anything. The jobs are not coming back. Homes are still in foreclosure. We are mired in two pointless wars while Bush pushes for a new one in the hopes that red blood will obscure the red ink.

Meanwhile, the price tag you will pay for helping Bush pay for it all will run into the thousands for each and every one of you. And all that will be accomplished is to put the final disaster off onto someone else's administration.