What You Doing in LA With Fillipinos and Eses?

I may talk a good game, but I actually know very little about the economy and why it seems to be shutting down right now. So, instead of writing about what I think is happening, I think it may be more useful to ask questions. Good idea, right? Check out the first installment here.

The government is set to announce some kind of bailout in which they will take over the bad mortgages and, hopefully, stem the financial crisis. Isn't this a bad idea?

How can the government take on more debt when they're already $10 trillion or so in debt already?

Does this help the people who are in danger of losing their house to foreclosure? Does the government gaurantee that their mortgage gets paid or do they just gaurantee that the banks won't get screwed over when people can't pay their mortgages? In other words, do people get to keep their houses that they can't afford?

Is the government planning a similiar bail-out for credit card companies when they start to feel the effect of millions of people not paying off their balances?

Haven't we already seen that government bail-outs don't work? They bailed out Bear Stearns and that didn't seem to help the economy much.

Won't this bail-out just create a whole different bubble? If the mortgages are still bad and the stock market is still floundering, how will this help in the long-run? Won't this only make the crisis worse in the long-term?

Is it cynical to suggest that this is just a short-term solution set in place by the outoing Republican Administration so that the economy won't completely tank before the elections in November so that McCain/Palin still have a chance?

But, is it really the right move for the government to just sit back and do nothing? Isn't there some kind of happy medium? Am I thinking more deeply about this than the government?

What does Obama think?

Is the stock market really as dumb as it seems? Investors are pulling money out and putting money back in at a moment's notice this week on any kind of news. What is the overarching strategy behind all this? Does it work?

If the stock market is this easily manipulated, isn't it not a good measure of the health of the economy? What is a good measure of the health of the economy?

Are the American taxpayers, ultimately, going to be footing the entire bill for all of these billions of dollars in government bail-outs? If that's the case, won't that hurt the economy even more when the already stretched-thin American worker has to pay more in taxes?

What are the long-term implications of the government taking control of Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Doesn't this set a horrible precdent and isn't it completely antithetical to how a free-market economy is supposed to work?

Does this set our country on to a more socialist path or a more fascist one? Or has it gotten to the point where the lines are so blurred that it doesn't really matter?

In light of all the bail-outs, why didn't Lehman Bros. make the cut?

And, of course, what is the next storied financial institution to fail?