I am extremely uncomfortable with the bailout when hardly a word is spoken about how we are going to avoid repeating this mistake. So far the only mortgage reform I have seen has been performed by the market. Securities based on sub-prime and Alt-A mortgages are practically worthless. Companies holding these securities cannot sell them because it would force them to officially recognize that the securities they continue to hold are worthless and trigger bankruptcy. The problem is that the mark-to-market pricing says we are a bunch of fools for issuing so many of these mortgages in the first place. For its part Congress has done nothing to take the bullets out of the sub-prime mortgage gun. Since we have already shot ourselves in the foot once, I am hoping that Congress would take the opportunity to avoid loading the gun again by enacting some real mortgage financing reform before the window of opportunity closes.

If a friend or relative came to me to borrow money for their business, I would have a lot of questions before I gave them all of the money they requested. For a friend I might provide emergency funding with just a few questions. Before I committed any more of my money I would want to hear and evaluate all of their ideas to reduce my risk of not being paid back. Using this same logic I feel it prudent to partially fund the bailout but I think there are a lot of good ideas out there that can potentially lower the cost to the tax payers and help avoid repeating past mistakes.  I think any further funding should be subject to a full debate by Congress. It would be nice if Congress would use this opportunity to improve their image. It would be nice if they could seek the high road in the debate and not add "partisan projects" to the funding. We are not happy with the bailout so don’t make it worse. We can be very fickle voters during a recession.