I've gotta take issue with you shrugging off the credit freeze.

You might be OK with businesses grinding to a halt, but the people running those businesses might not be in the position to just take it in the stomach and walk it off. The economy before the collapse hasn't been the greatest; a credit freeze could, literally, mean someone's *house*.

It's not like you'd be hurting the rich people: take away 10 of John McCain's 16 houses, and he still has 6. Take away 1 of my houses, and I'm sleeping in a car. There's a big, big difference in damage dealt.

This collapse happened only because we let a few businesses wedge themselves into cornerstone positions in our economy, unregulated. Which would be fine if they didn't screw up, but they did, so when they tanked, the economy lost a large part of its foundation and went with it.

The financial markets have worked well as long as they've been around: it's only been due to the last 8 years of completely reckless mismanagement of our government that this even happened. In the century, there's only been 10 great stock market crashes, and several of those were inevitable (September 11th, etc). This one could have been avoided, but wasn't.

(regardless, they all bounced back, and continued being an invaluable resource to fledgling companies.)

The system clearly needs to be readjusted via regulation so that out-of-control executives don't drive cornerstone industries into the ground, but wanting to scrap such a valuable asset because of the current administration's foolhardy actions is not a very rational plan. As I alluded to above, the only people who are really going to feel the pain of this are the people who can't afford it.

Besides, I'm not trying to live out the prime of my life in America's next great depression, so if it takes a little cash to keep us from going belly-up, then it takes a little cash. I lost a little money in the stock-market, too -- actually, everything I still had in it. But I'll take my $3k loss over waking up two years from now to go wait in a breadline, which might happen if there's a run on the banks and credit lines freeze up.

By the way, there's no crazy voodoo to the stock market, and calling it a scam just because you don't understand it is so far beyond being a stretch I don't know how to describe it yet.