As you all are probably aware, Bush is planning on rewarding wall street corporations and their executives for destroying the economy by handing over the equivalent of more than $2200 per taxpayer, no strings attached. His plan includes no oversight, no accountability, and no plan to prevent the same things from happening in the future.

In the past decade or so, the Republicans that controlled the government successfully de-regulated Wall Street. They figured what's best for business is good for America. Either they greatly underestimated the power of human greed, or were expecting to profit from the excesses themselves. So what happened? De-regulated financial institutions were free to create a "culture of debt". They gave dozens of credit cards to anyone and everyone. I know I've received about a dozen credit card offers in the mail per week for several years. The worst thing, however, was the mortgage industry. As is now common knowledge, unethical lenders were luring potential home buyers into mortgages they couldn't afford, using "introductory rates" and "sliding scales", "variable rates" and the like. In a booming housing market, these financial sharks figured they'd lose money for a short time on the "intro rates" and whatnot, and then, down the line, there would be huge balloon payments and rate adjustments and then they'd "have" the homeowner. At the very worst, the homeowner would default and foreclose, and the financiers would then have the house, an appreciating asset. Well guess what? They over-did it. They were too greedy. Foreclosures skyrocketed, leading to these institutions have A LOT of houses on their hands, which they put up for sale, which flooded the market, which caused housing prices to begin a free-fall that is still ongoing, and will probably last for at least another year. So now mortgage companies are buried under tons of foreclosed homes, none of which are worth what the mortgage companies loaned homeowners to buy them any more. So, in effect, through the unsuspecting public, mortgage companies bought huge amounts of houses at inflated prices which they now can't sell for anywhere near what they loaned for them, if they can sell them at all. This was the bursting of the housing bubble that EVERYONE knew would come, but no one prepared for. This crisis was developing for many years, and many members of congress were aware of it far, far in advance. But, in a reactionary government that does not understand what "pro-active" means, there was no way that anything would be done about it until it was too late. We're talking FEMA after Katrina too late. And our corrupt politicians were happily collecting big paychecks from their lobbyist buddies who convinced them to de-regulate the industry in the first place. Then, once everything started to fall apart, our "leaders" were too busy pointing fingers and dodging blame to take any sort of action until financial institutions started to drop like flies. It's important to note that the "leaders" of these financial institutions were also actively planting their heads in the sand, and hiding reality as best they could from the public, because they wanted to insure that their preposterous, unearned paychecks continued for as long as possible. Take the money and run!

OK, as the title implies, I do have an idea to put forth here, aside from my ranting on the subject.

You want to pull $700 billion out of thin air and throw it at the problem? Fine, but I have a better idea of how to do it. Instead of handing it over to the very companies and executives that created the crisis in the first place, in effect rewarding them for their most destructive greed, lets do this:

Give that roughly $2200+  per taxpayer to the taxpayers themselves. And give it with the requirement that it be spent on paying off debt. That way, each taxpayer is still contributing their share directly to the financial market, but they're also benefiting from it. As a result, instead of buying bad debt with that huge sum, the government is instead paying off said bad debt. This will reduce every American's individual debt, and therefore give people more disposable income via reductions in their monthly debt burden, thus also acting as an economic stimulus.

There's my plan. Any thoughts?

Aside from this, the best suggestion I've heard is this:

We should all call our local congressperson and let them know that we are in financial crisis, and request an individual, personal bail-out. Seriously. It's no more absurd than the plan on the table.