Craig,

Precisely. This bailout won't work because it is paradoxically only supplying more fuel to the fire that is raging.

I've never believed the 'free market' was 'free', that was a merely propaganda design, not to illustrate 'how' the market functioned, but to disguise 'who' it functioned for.

Disturbingly this bailout risks dragging the rest of the US economy and the dollar into the bottomless debt black hole, with unimaginable consequeneces. The black hole contains dozens of trillions of bad debt and has an insatiable appitite for taxpayers cash.

Paulson seems to want to create the post of financial czar, a position of such power that it will, in reality, rival that of the President. Not only that, he wishes to introduce 'reforms' that will give him extraordinary powers over the US economy and at the same time protect him form judicial or legal scrutiny.

This is rather like the 'coup' Bush pushed through after 9/11 when he asked and was given 'de facto' dictatorial powers to defend the United States.

If the Congress gives Paulson these extraordinary powers over the economy, it will have profound political and social consequences. Real power will be concentrated in a tiny number of super-powerful men's hands.

Paulson is estimated to have a personal fortune in excess of 250 million dollars, most of it acquired when he worked for Goldmund-Sachs. He can hardly be considered neutral. He is biased towards saving his own skin and those of his friends in the financial aristocracy, the real power and rulers of the United States.

Anyway I could write about this bizarre and grotesque dance of death for days, but I'll resist the temptation and stop here. It's a shame we live in such interesting times, as I had planned to enjoy a life of luxury for the next thirty years, now I'm not sure it'll quite work out that way.

There is in fact a long history of this 'Welfare State' for the rich. Especially if they are arms manufacturers. BAE Systems is a case in point with millions being spent in 'Aid' to other countries, provided they spend a substantial amount on 'Defence' contracts with UK companies.

The U.S. has a long history of propping up its huge Military Industrial Complex as well. In fact it is curious how often a convenient war appeared to reverse cuts in Defence spending ordered by Congress.

The fact that this bail-out extends to banks and other financial institutions comes as no surprise. It has long been apparent that governments around the world have deliberately facilitated the theft of wealth from the public and its transfer to the powerful.

For the past 25 years at least, there has been a steady rise in the gap between rich and poor, and a transfer of a greater proportion of the worlds wealth into a smaller minority of anonymous corporate executives and investors.

Being that Corporations and Financial institutions have deeply penetrated all areas of our so called 'Democratic' systems, it can only be deduced that this has all been well planned and implemented over a number of years.

It is actually a form of slavery. Aside from the Elites who control the vast majority of the wealth, the rest of the worlds population can be divided into two main groups:
1. About 2/3rds of humanity provide the cheap labour to produce goods, foodstuffs and raw materials.
2. The remaining third exist to fall into tremendous life long debt in order to consume this produce, and keep the money flowing into the coffers of the corporations.

Governments are little more than middle management in this system and therefore are invariably going to facilitate its continuation.