When it comes to the finance issue, 700bn is the wrong number.

If that's the extent of the problem, its "too small" to warrant a bailout. If there is a true problem, then its only a drop in the bucket.

Its another example of throwing money at a crisis and hoping it goes away.

As long as it goes away until after the election, our pork brokers in Congress will be happy.

The good news in all this is that loan money is drying up:

The condo whores won't be able to finance more neighborhood destruction.

Californicators will slow their Northward migration as they will/are have/having trouble selling their overpriced condos to new suckers to move cash out and move to stumptown.

Sam's streetcar rape of Portland may die from lack of federal money.

Same for the Homer's Milwaulkie line through his soon to be bankrupt SoWhat scam.

We may finally find out who is telling the truth and who is lying about whether or not the city's general fund is on the hook for Homer's condo whore bonds (UR) in the SoWhat and Pearl.

Maybe our fondest dreams will come true and the people's disgust will be so big that the PDC is abolished!!!

Maybe (dreaming) we will even take away the city's power to play real estate investor!!!

I wish.

They'll lay off half the police before they'll give up their "urban renewal" toys.

Meanwhile, McCain and Palin are fiddlin' while Wall Street burns.

Look! Over here! Ayers! And there? Jeremiah Wright! Look!

Allan L: you raise an interesting point, however, let's talk instead about the wonderful colors of Fall.

"lay off half the police "

the life expectancy of the mentally ill in pdx would shoot up.

WaPo is reporting that Paulson misled Bush on the bailout. They say that when Bush asked about "Plan B", after Congress nixed the original proposal, Paulson said there wasn't one. In fact, prominent economists were advocating a number of options which could have improved the situation without a wholesale, unreimbursed give-away of public dollars.

Among those alternative proposals was that of our own Peter DeFazio. His proposal aggregated four of the best-liked, lowest cost, big-brain options.

Tempted to say it was ignored because it didn't fleece the taxpayers sufficiently, but it may have merely been ignored as NIH (not invented here).

Proud of Wyden, DeFazio and Blumenauer for resisting the collective mugging of the revised "Plan A".

I've told my children they can remember Friday as the day they participated in the biggest daylight robbery in history. Regrettably, though, they were among the victims.

Don't forget to take advantage the Bicycle Commuter Act part of the bailout to encourage your employer to get you your $20/month per bicyclist for bike gear. See Sec. 211.