So with governments backing up banks...questions?

[LeftHander]

Where are the funds coming from to buy our debt?

How do we pay interest on that debt?

Isn't that what other nations use to back their banks?

I mean someone explain how the national debt fits into this crisis.

It seems to be that our "markers" are essentially worthless if other nations cannot invest in our hunger for debt.

I just don't buy it that we can have 9 Trillion dollars in stock value vanish from the economy and just have the government say..."No problem."..and throw money at the banks and we merrily go along our way.

We are 18 Trillion Dollars in the hole adding market losses and the national debt...?

???WTF???

[sarcasmo]

1. Doesn't this make us Socialist?

[Eric J in MN]

2. Dick Cheney says that deficits don't matter.

http://www.ontheissues.org/2004/Dick_Cheney_Budget_+_Economy.htm

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was told "deficits don't matter" when he warned of a looming fiscal crisis.

O'Neill, fired in a shakeup of Bush's economic team in December 2002, raised objections to a new round of tax cuts and said the president balked at his more aggressive plan to combat corporate crime after a string of accounting scandals because of opposition from "the corporate crowd," a key constituency.

O'Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone-posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: "We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due." A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.

The vice president's office had no immediate comment, but John Snow, who replaced O'Neill, insisted that deficits "do matter" to the administration.

[paparush]

3. Fiscal Conservatives?