$700,000,000,000.00

While President Bush urges lawmakers of his own party in the House to back a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized WaMu, one of the nation's largest banks.

Washington Mutual Inc. overnight imploded under the weight of its enormous volume of bad mortgages, the FDIC then sold the assets to JPMorgan Chase & Co. for $1.9 billion
Banks and brokerage houses are falling and merging so fast they look like Gladiators having a bad run of luck against a Colosseum full of hungry lions. It is clear that the whole mortgage industry
is simply in water over it's head and they no longer have the strength to tread water.

The idea that the "Market place" will be able to sort this out by it's self has been abandon by all but a small percentage of the true anti regulation die-hard's. To the vast majority, it is clear that the
federal government has to step in and shore up the banking system. The problem is that some of these anti regulation true believers lawmakers, in the house, have rejected Bush's $700 billion bank bailout and have stalled any
deal coming forward.

While I have a difficult time with the idea of fixing the problem by handing money over to the same people that messed it up in the first place. And I fully understand that it is a grave mistake to expect the U.S. Government to micro manage
the economy. I agree that it is the private sector that creates wealth, jobs and expands the economy. But just as the Democratic party has given up on the discredited idea that the government can solve all of our problems; it is time for the right wing of the Republican party to abandon the notion that deregulation is the silver bullet to all of our problems. An intelligent view of how we got to this current mess, demonstrates that both the public and private both have a role to play.

Larry Lubell