Chaos in 48 Hours

Is there anyone out there that really understands what is going on in the financial world?  How come our current administration insisted for the past year that our economy was sound and that it would survive the sub-prime mortgage crisis and then turn around in a panic and, just last week, ask Congress for $700 billion dollars.  This is a government intervention unprecedented since the Great Depression.  Shouldn’t the public have had some warning that a meltdown was inevitable?   Shouldn’t the taxpayers have been prepared for the fact that they would eventually be responsible for picking up the pieces instead of facing a demand (on a Monday morning, no  less)  that the Fed needed this money and they needed it now or else?  This all seems so surreal that I can’t quite grasp the immediacy of the bailout.  What does this say about the collective intelligence of corporate and political America?  No wonder the American public is not behind this.  It is time for Congress to support their constituents and look at not revising this bailout, but  throwing it back into Wall Street’s hands - after all, isn’t that why they pay these guys the big bucks?.  If our government has $700 billion dollars to just give away then let’s jump start the economy by giving it to the taxpayers.