Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Finance, the economy & Economics How will the financial crisis develop?

So anybody who pops up on television, or in a congressional hearing, to talk about the vital necessity of this regrettable bailout, should be asked to give a sense of how much it might cost and then to come up with a way to pay for it. Two hundred billion dollars? Fine, please delineate $200 billion in spending cuts over the next two years or $200 billion in tax increases to pay to clean up your mess. Which cabinet-level agency should be zeroed out? Which benefits programs cut? Which component of the defense budget gutted? I'd love to hear what former Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld, or President Bush (who continues to cower behind Paulson's large frame) or Goldman SachsCEO Lloyd Blankfein and Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, whose butts were just saved, has to propose. After all, every dollar spent by the taxpayers cleaning up Wall Street's mess is one more added to the massive and expanding deficit, one more dollar that will have to be paid back with interest.