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Dude, if there were no bailout banks wouldn't loan any money, even to each other and if that happened, our economy would come to a screeching halt.

Bank's have two products. They hold savings and checking accounts. And the other product is to loan the cash they are saving to others at a premium. Sometimes banks are referred to as Savings and Loans. The loan product is where almost all their income comes from. As long as the American people make, market, sell and buy products, our economy survives. The only thing that comes to a screeching halt is a banks revenue. They must loan money to make money. That is their primary business.

Like screeching halt where there's no gasoline and food disappears from store shelves then lights go out and shit.

Evan, this is the type of hystaria that causes economies to fail. The Great Depression was caused by several things. But mainly, the perception of the people that the economy, the government and large industries where fundamentally insecure. Perception dictates reality. In the late 90s securities (ie stock markets) where at a high not because those companies were worth that much but because the perception was that they were worth that much. It is pretty cool when you think about it but perception causes reality. I believe the true reason Congress voted on a bailout package and quantified that package was so that the American perception would be "the government is on top of this and everything is O.K. Since it is O.K. I can continue my part in the make -> market -> sell -> buy cycle". That is the life cycle of our free market economy. If people panic, then they stop purchasing...they stop buying. The free market economy slows. Farmers have food to sell. If people act irrationally that would only depress the price of food stuff. Same with oil. Those countries have oil to sell. Our country is the only buyer of that quantity. Those tankers are heading this way. They have to unload that product before the next tanker gets here. They have to sell. If people stop buying they will lower the price of gasoline to encourage a sale. These are the fundamentals of macro economics.

I believe you corrected my use of a word so in the future I would not sound stupid. I wrote the above not to argue with you, but in the hope that you would spread the same ideas. I had lunch with my dad's sister today. She was a VP at Bank of America in the group that managed Oil & Gas. She is now retired and her retirement was on the front page of the WSJ. Sounds cool but she was let go because of some kind of impropriety. Anyway, we talked politics for a while and I asked her what she thought about the bailout. She said two things. The first basically as I said above which the purpose was to calm the American people which it has not done. The second is that that is a large amount of money, so much that it is hard to really grasp and that will ultimately be misappropriated. If ultimate power corrupts ultimately then what would that much money do? As my dad pointed out, this is a guy who made his money on Wall Street and it is a little bit of a good old boys club. I don't think we will see much of that money being used as Barack Obama says it should because there is little to no oversight.