Tangent: the enemy in Iraq is not nearly as well equipped or as good at their job as they were in Vietnam. Insurgents couldn't plan a Tet offensive if they tried.
Our governments problem, and sadly most of our "help me" citizens, is that they don't realize when you send out lump sums of money be it for health care, other countries, bailing out your economy, subsidizing whatever...you pull from the general taxpayer..ie yourself. Similar to those individuals that levy huge punitive damages against insurance companies, as if they are going to pay the costs
Until we realize you can't do all the things you'd like, we'll never change. I was listening to an economist yesterday explaining the FF bailout.
Again, stop uncontrolled social programs. You can not go around implementing things because they "feel good" or "we should lead the way". There are a lot of things we "should" do, we can't do them all. I remember being in my econ class in high school a whopping 12 years ago and being tasked for the semester with "balancing the federal budget". Every single student group achieved it, why, not because there were irresponsible cuts (as a board of teachers kept us in line on that front) but because as students "playing senators/reps" we had no political ties, no reason to benefit from our decisions. That was the key
I refuse to believe a group of 26 teenagers in public school knew more then those on the hill
To sum him up:
You had to do something from the government standpoint because the worst indicators were that other markets would become unstable if F/F fell apart. But, you didn't have to do the bail out that was done. What the government and citizens haven't realized is that in 3-5 years you will have another mortgage crisis when these loans passed to the federal government go unpaid and the government becomes a gigantic sub-prime lender. And I can guarantee you members of Congress bought huge amounts of stock in F/F right before they signed the bill.