Its time to rethink everything.

I agree with the Chronicler.

The next few days are the most critical to whether our country survives in any form that is recognizable. It has become clear that the government is willing to spend up to $1 Trillion to fix the economy. My fear, and the major consensus from economists, is that they are about to massively screw it up. We only get one chance at this (unless someone finds another trillion dollar bill lying around), so we better do it right because we won't get another. Congress MUST take their time and gets this right despite the pressure from the Bush Administration and a rapidly deteriorating stock market.

This post on Angry Bear sums it up for me. The problem with the Paulson plan is that it attempts to keep the financial industry as the main engine of our economy. But that is exactly what brought on this disaster in the first place--that Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs replaced manufacturing and human capital (meaning how well are people educated, skilled, in good health) as the basis of our economy. America has been massively deluded for so long, thinking that traders selling debt to one another could constitute a healthy economy, but the rude awakening is upon us now. Paulson wants to try for a quick fix that keeps the status quo, when we are WAY past the point where the status quo is workable.

Our leaders must accept, as difficult as it is, that our nation's economy must be entirely restructured and that this will cause massive pain. There is no getting around this fact. So they can spend a trillion dollars propping up a system that is doomed to fail or they can start down the road to a solution.