I am still hopeful that we will be able to fix this mess pretty soon. In the meantime, it's pretty sad to see the real Bush, now that his lambs clothing is off. He's been shedding for awhile, but now, pretty ugly.

I imagine the republicans are more angry with him because he used them, their values, their faith, their principles–he used them all and left them in pieces.

Why is it that whenever there is trouble we find it easy to blame or call those charged with responsibilities names, instead offering a solution?

DEAR FORBES, You Sir is the worst person for voicing a reflection of your FOBIA in others.
PERIOD.

January 20th won't come quick enough.

Yet everyday, we hear conservative talk show people talk about socialisms, liberalism, and unpatrioticism. How can you steal so much from the public and still have people believe your party can provide honest leadership.

Amazing that the braintrust called Congress demand that the domestic auto industry lick their boots for a LOAN, after blithely handing over $700 billion taxpayer dollars to the pirates of the banking industry and Wall St. What a con job our dear "Representatives" swallowed!

There darn well better be some people in orange jumpsuits when this is all over, or I believe the People will have their day in the Court of street justice! This isn't over by a long shot!

I'm surprised more people aren't outraged by all of this.

America is paying dearly for the Republicans choosing of someone who has no sense. A president who cannot think, is not an intellect, and has brought down the USA and the world at large. Bush should be charged for all the crimes/sufferings he committed his 8 years in office. This is not what the people of America deserve.

Relative to the bailout of "The Big 3", why not bring back the ability of taxpayers to write off the interest on new car loans as it was several decades ago, but limit it only to those vehicles built in the US. It seems that would be more practical than just giving them 25 billion at taxpayer expense without seeing a benefit to those paying the money
(the taxpayer). It seems it might help stimulate sales of new cars and continued employment of those in the industry.

And by the way, the new guy's not exactly 'change', is he?

However, the risk versus reward equation is skewed in this country. Our senior-most executives are paid far in excess of the value that they create. In some cases, they are NO VALUE ADDED.

I can't justify paying ANYBODY ..... and I mean ANYBODY more than $2M per year as a salary and total compensation (salary, stock, options, deffered cash) should be limited to $4M per year and should be at risk for at least 5 years.

Nobody is worth more than that. Nobody does that much good for the country or an organization that they need more than $2M. How many Ferraris can a guy buy, how many 8,000 ft2 mansions?, how large a diamond should he buy for his supermodel girlfriend that he keeps on the side?

If shareholders won't put bounds on this then the government should. It is determental to the nation's interest for these types of inequities to exist.

Honestly, CEO's making 100 times what the floor worker makes is absurd. 10-to-20 times ... reasonable ... 100-times-to-5,000 times .... that's IDIOTIC

The Bush Administration is staffed by crooks and failures.

We need some intelligence in Congress. We've got women engineers, black engineers, hispanic engineers, and white male engineers. We don't have to sacrafice diversity for brains.

All Congress does is point fingers after the fact. They don't add any value ... and certainly don't worke to prevent graft, corruption, mismanagement, etc.

There are thousands of highly intelligent Ivy-leagure graduates (Columbia, Harvard, Dartmouth, Wharton) MBAs with many years of experience in industry, finance ...(not just banking) ... that know far more than the current members of Congress and are far more trustworthy, and less selfish, than the current crop of executives on Wall Street, including Paulson.

Put a team of smart outsiders in a room and they will figure it out. With a team, any "pitfalls" will be revealed ahead of time.

Paulson is fruit of the posioned tree and is only interested in feathering the nest of his country club buddies .... we saw the same thing with Bush, Cheney and their oil-industry buddies. When will Congress wise up and expect graft & corruption FIRST from these revolving names instead of writing these blank checks?

We need a bunch of early 40 somethings that are unknown to the popular press but that are brilliant and we need to incentivize them with a life long pension for 12 years of good work. Give them the kind of golden parachutes that Congress has. In exchange for that, we can get them to leave their Vice President & Director level jobs at America's best run corporations.

Hopefully Pres. Elect Obama & his administration will pride themselves on honesty and real solutions.

The total failure of leadership from the administration is frightening. Lame duck yes, but it doesn't have to be this lame.

Secretary Paulson makes a fine target for our frustrations, but he does have a boss, somewhere. Has anyone seen George W. Bush around?

A truly intelligent person surrounds themselves with those smarter than they are...........

Please, can Barack start early!!???

It's ultimatly their responsibility what is done with our tax money. Quit bashing Bush...what about Reid and Peolsi who did not require any plan from Paulson and will still be there after January 20th??

Are you still gonna blame Bush for it???