It's just like the current administration to leave us with one more disaster to remember it by. It wasn't enough to start an unnecessary war. It wasn't enough to sit on their hands while New Orleans drowned. No, they had one more failure to give us. Now the economy is in the worst shape it's been since the Great Depression.

As I am writing this no one knows what Congress will come up with to save some Wall Street billionaires who caused all of this because of their greed. What we do know is at least how much it will cost. It will be at least $700 billion, and probably more before it's done.

This whole mess began when financial institutions were left free to do as they pleased as far as business was concerned. Even though deregulation has always caused disaster or near disaster, the President and Congress bent over as always and rewrote the rule book to give the financial community just what it wanted. As a result, this administration that inherited a budget surplus is about to create the biggest deficit ever.

What I find interesting about this is how the financial community came to the government for help. These Reagan era Republicans are always advocating less government, saying that government is the problem when things are going well. They complain about any government regulation or oversight, claiming that, left alone, business would just get bigger and bigger and richer and richer. When instead deregulation leads to disaster, it's the very government that they ridiculed that they run to for help.

These same people who strut around bragging about how they don't need a handout from the government, that they can make it on their own, are now begging that government for a handout. These same people who look down on the poor who depend on food stamps and WIC, should remember that $700 billion is the biggest welfare payment ever.

Do you know that the original plan would have given the $700 billion to one man, to use as he saw fit? The stupidity that radiates from Washington, if it could be converted to energy, could heat and air-condition our houses, and run our cars forever.

Did you also know that one of the negotiation points was over whether or not the CEO's of these failed banks would still get their multi-million dollar payouts as part of that $700 billion? Can you imagine the gall it must take to even bring that up? They should just forget those golden parachutes and just be thankful that we don't still tar and feather such scoundrels.

We will get through this crisis, somehow. I don't know what the solution will be, but I hope that whatever happens, we learn enough to prevent this from ever happening again.

I hope that, but I don't expect it.