Reply #20: I hear you, and I don't know what foreign banks will do.

[Laelth]

But the logic behind the TARP is that failure to stabilize our financial sector will cause an erosion of global confidence and cut off our access to foreign money ... something we desperately need right now to finance our enormous deficit (the one Bush left us) and to finance additional government spending that's necessary to lessen the impact of the recession.

Clinton left us with a surplus in 2000, and our national debt (as a percentage of GDP) is still lower than it was during WWII. We can pay off this debt. We just can't pay it off right now ... not in the middle of this recession. For the moment, we must borrow from foreign banks, and we are bailing out AIG and our own failing banks to create confidence in the American financial sector and to keep our line of credit open.

Whether it will work is another question, but there is a good argument for doing it, and both parties are in agreement about it (regardless of the posturing we see in the corporate media).

:dem:

-Laelth