Does anyone consider the timing of the hastily arranged G-20 in Washington a little suspect? I do and here's why. President Defect George W. Bush rarely does anything out of the kindness of his heart. This "summit" was agreed upon prior to the election. At that time I'm certain that GDub believed in his Christian heart of hearts that the next president would be John McCain.
Basically, if Bush does not invite Obama to this summit it will be one of the biggest mistakes of his already mistake filled presidential term. Message to George W., sit down and relax and try not to touch anything for the next two months. Adult supervision is on the way.

Beltway Greg

Evil sneaky Bush....at it again.....okay lets look at it for a moment.....the government get 35% of the profits of US corporations via tax with little or no risk.....if the banks being acquired were allowed to fail, not counting the huge psychological impact on the public, the FDIC gets left holding the bag so the government hit either way. If banks and other "evil" corporations keep going, you the tax payer gets jobs and 35% of the take with little or no risk. The government is just taking care of its cash cows.....stop crying.....tax dollars that companies pay are dollars that the public isn;t paying.

The acquired bank's purchase price should have already been reduced because of the losses. If we give the acquiring entity credit for these losses, which had already been accounted for in the reduced price, it amounts to a gift.

I can't remember ever reading a more biased account of an event. The author should be fired immediately. I'm not in favor of a bail-out but our government has made such a mess of the credit market we probably need to. By all accounts, the government is at fault for the mess we're in by forcing the making of loans to unqualified buyers and then allowing such highly leveraged trading of the packaged mortgages. I shudder to think we are now trusting the government to fix the problem they created by their mismanagement and regulations.

We the people can only pray that W. Bush gets his due. Maybe all the enemies he has made in the far east will get him. He does not deserve the right to live here in the USA. This one time daft dodger, siliver spooned, silver platter, drunkered has distroyed our country. And yea, Cheney should be right beside him in paying for the crimes they have inflicted on the American People ! SIGNED AN AMERICAN VETERAN ! ! ! ! ! ! !

As a moderate Republican, I am seeing my party being destroyed by pure nonsense, innuendo, rumor mongering, and falsehoods of the far right. I hate to say, they are worse then the far left. For example, John Hawkins reports that US Corporate Industry pays 35% of the taxes. Actually on paper the rate is 39% the second highest in the world. However, the fact is that 68% of Corporate Industry pays NO TAXES, and the rest pay little or none by employing immoral and exotic tax loopholes. The only corporations that pay the 39% tax are the small ma and pa shops. I could go and list all of the crap purported by the far right, but it would fill a library. The fact remains, taxes have been cut significantly for the privileged and spending wasn’t. As a result, they have created a small class of royalty and the middle class has all but been wiped out.

It seems that the Democrats are not doing their due diligence. According to this article President Bush "snuck" this tax break into the bill "Second, he snuck a $140 billion bank tax break into that same bailout bill ".

At the time this bill was before Congress, there were 240 Democrats in the House of Representatives and 49 Democratic Senators, plus 2 Independent Senators who have aligned themselves with the Democratic party. So, by my math that means President Bush "snuck" this tax break by 291 Democrats in Congress and not one Democrat knew of this. That means President Bush was more intelligent, more stealth, more clever than 291 Democrats.

Or it means that 291 Democrats agreed with him (about the tax breaks to banks) at the time the bill was passed. If one Democrat says that he/she did not know of this, shouldn't they resign from Congress due to the lack of due diligence on a very important bill? If they knew of this tax break why didn't he/she speak out about the tax break if he/she felt it was a bad idea? It seems the Democratic party wants to blame the President for all of their failings to do their job the correct way. The Legislative branch (Congress) is a check and balance of the Executive branch (Presidential) in our government. Why is Congress failing our country? Why are the Democrats failing the United States of America? If the Democratic Congress acts this way, we have much more of this to look forward too in the next few years. I do not see this as a Presidential failure but much more as a Democratic Congress failure, again.

The Democrats seem to blame Bush even for bad wheather; the facts are otherwise.
Barnie Franks, Chris Dodd, Chuck Shumer & Allen Greenspan are mostly responsible for the sub-prime mess and the financial meltdown. When the banks were forced to make sub-prime mortgages by these "gentlemen", where were all the committees to stop this nonsense?

What a dam shame!