This entire banking/financial problem sounds like a huge Ponzi scheme to me. For months I heard comments via various Public Radio stories and on the net, about the mortgage companies dealing with only certain appraisers, ones that would give them a figure they want rather than what was true, homes being worth three times what they were worth 20 years ago....... Others complained about the adjustable rate mortgages and how they were going to come back to bite some butts. There were so many people saying the system was set to fail - and it has been failing for quite some time, we just didn't see it come to a head until this past fall season. Was it sooner than that?

I don't think there is any one solution AND we will get through it. We have been in banking trouble before - just less seriously. This is an international problem.

Printing money? No bail outs? Bail outs? I surely hope we learn our lesson from this **&(*&( mess.

As far as Japan and it's problems years ago, well, from what I have read, they didn't put enough money into their system soon enough and long enough, thus taking 10 years to dig out of their recession. The recession (if you will) right now is WORLD wide, not just the USA. We have nothing to compare it to, as far as I know.

As far as AIG goes, well, give them their ())&&&*^& bonuses and then let the Financial Products division fold. Let them find new jobs, listing AIG, FP on their resumes. Good luck with that.

I think the greed factor is/was our worst enemy and in some strange way, we are all guilty of wanting to earn more money on our investments, own bigger homes, drive faster gas guzzling cars, having babies we cannot now afford to educate and in some cases, feed. But we didn't sign up for the scheme part of it and we aren't getting a bonus for participating. We are getting the debt to bail out this mess. I suppose, we share that with the creeps at the top of the scheme chain, as they too, will be asked to pay taxes - maybe!