M E Jenssen, indeed, the topic is too big to be covered in such a discusson forum. In fact, I am afraid of overstaying my wellcome. I remain convinced that we, the public, are being treated like children, and our thoughts convenietnly redirected towards the smaller issues. No politician wants to endanger the status quo. Therefore, they will continue to rearrange the chairs on the Titanic. The purpose is to insure that selected few can shield themselves from the wrath of the market. The process is giving them time to get out of danger zone. We will pick up the tab. Historically speaking, there is nothing new or creative here. Most of us, including the politicians, are part of the system. My theses is the structural defficinency of the system, and if not fixed, will not just crak --- it will break. It is still a nineteen century system that is coping with the turbo-globalized world. Telecomminications, transportation, and cheap energy have fueled global interconnectedness. Our nineteen century system has been given several leases on life, and with it, the illusion that this is a perfect system. WWII, cold War and the total trade embargo of the Soviet Union, rapacious reformed IMF-style colonialism, financial and monetary advantages of Breton Woods --- all that reinforced the notion that the system has an endless expanding capacity. The cracks have started to show during Carter administration, but the reorientation of the country did not start until Reagan. That was the era of decision-making in Washington that was to pave the way to today's crisis. The deindustrialization of the country was deliberate. The profitable American companies became "cash cows", and were "leveraged" to provide capital for foreign investments. I will not bore you with the theory behind it: we were just somehow, magically, going to profit from globalization. Clinton continued the mantra, as the early goings were just splendid. Americans were lead to believe that the abundant credit --- based on the premise of continued US monetary dominance -- is the benefit of globalism. The KEY POINT: the policies were based on the irrational schema that the world will continue to finance US, and that US and its Western partners, will continue to be the real beneficiary of the global economy. Many economists, not the ones that get published often, disagreed from the getgo. Why? Because they knew that the new corporate world is transnational, and does NOT contribute to the elementary costs of running a nation. Therefore, all the burden has been shifted to the taxpayer. The taxpayer will have to make endless choices between fixing roads, paying for military, health care of retirements. Basically, we became broke. We had to borrow from other countries, mortgaging our good name and reputation. This is why I believe that the old fashioned, nineteen centry notion of GIVING away money to corporations, will no longer work. The only thing that will work is to implement STRUCTURAL REFORMS, not just oversight bandaids. Oversight will not PUT MONEY INTO OUR EMPTY COFFERS. Even before "bailout" we were broke. Now, we are just a little more broke. And the only way to implement structural reforms is to uderstand that our, taxpayers assets (money and everything else we collectively own) must be treated as a sacred capital. We need to become MORE CAPITALIST. In the global economy, it is no longer possible to create a bunker USA. For that reason alone, it is essential to wish all those corporations good luck, but with a proviso: good fences make good neighbors. So while they are free to roam globally, we need to set the rules locally. And NUMBER ONE RULE IS: NO FREE LUNCH. Every penny going into a corporate sector needs to be treated as an investment, with the returns clearly defined. That will be the ONLY way US taxpayers will see ANY of the fabulous money these corporations make worldwide. And these investments need to be made through publicly charted corporations, so that their work is transparent, professional and free of political meddling. Their sole job is to be profit-oriented, so that the taxpayers money yields highest returns. We can talk about corruption. I find the topic to be often nothing more then the distraction. Joe the Public is supposed to be stupid and emotional, and try to figure out how his next door neighbour makes money, while he is struggling. Corruption, and the fight against the corruption, are often political slogans. That does not mean corruption is not a serious matter. But the petty corruption of petty burocrats, is not in the same league with the structurally corrupt system that does not protect public interes, and public money. Too much emhpasis has been placed on human failings, and the expectations of them being "good" or "greedy", etc. is really a smoke screen. It is the structure of the government, and their ability to spend OUR money, as well as take loans in OUR name, that should make people pause. Of course that the alphabet soup of "financial instruments" is fraudulent. But what is lost in the noise is this: those who COLLECTED money from the investors, and who knew full well that they were selling pure wind, stashed that money somewhere. Those who created the fraudulent paper were not likely to INVEST in those papers, for sure. Ask yourself: where did the money really go? And why did Henry Paulson, former boss at Goldman Saks, "reinvent" the same company by the stroke of the pen, changing it from the investment bank into a "bank holding" institution? And why, of all people, did the former executive of Goldman Saks, got appointed to be the point man for the distribution of the 700 billion emergency funds? Now that is the corruption to talk about, not the petty clerk in Russia who may get a little money to "grease" a process that would otherwise take forever to do. Here, we are trying to EQUALIZE everything, but are still carefully avoiding the key issues. In my view, corruption is always the result of a structural weaknesses of any system. The better the system, less corruption. Or at least, corruption reduced to the issues of ethics in public service. But a large scale structural problems result in a fundamentally corrupt system, because it becomes the only way to do business. Improving oversight is like putting a thumb in a dike. It will work for a while, but only if the alert population understands that something much bigger needs to get done. At this time, Joe the Public is confused. This is why we dream of Joe the Plumber. That Joe Plumber of yesteryear is an honest hard working man, who does not expect handouts, but wants to be trated fairly. Joe the Plumber is the image we would like to be. Joe the Public in the meantime, is the irresponsible fellow. And likes it this way --- who needs hard thinking. Unfortunatelly for both of them, government (federal, state or local) that does not have the money for basic maintenance of its collective home, must make some hard choices. And, if in the meantime those governments do not understand how to protect its revenue from being drained by the corporate fat cats, they will have not other recourse but to tax both Joes.