Jim Martin - I'll offer another comment on this issue. In recent days, it's come to pass that both the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the president are desperately tring to come up with some way of bailing out their rich friends who have huge amounts of capital at risk in the US capital markets.

             When a similar thing happened with the Savings and Loans, the Bush Sr. was in charge, and Neil Bush got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, the solution was simple. The simply expanded FDIC insurance to accounts that weren't previously insured.

               This time it's tougher. They don't want to dirty their hands with the prospect of bailing out the little people, those folks who have mortgages they cannot pay, so they are stuck with finding a way to bail out the fat-cats while leaving ordinary wage earners holding the bag.

             They are making the case that the ordinary guy in the street who bought a house he couldn't afford was a "speculator." Their friends, on the other hand, who pushed the loans to the dirty unwashed, were not speculators, they were simply well capitalized business people who were simply trying to improve their bottom line by backing shaking loans that payed higher interest rates.

             Frankly, a crash is the only way I can see that we can get things back on track.