t appears likely that in some form, after much wrangling over a short period, the U.S. Treasury will be receiving part of $700 billion dollars to buy up troubled mortgage investments. That's the plan urged by the Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary ,Henry Paulson. This would be heading the US government into uncharted waters. They would be attempting to tackle a systematic financial crisis with a purchase, system wide, of problem assets. We hope it'll work, but there is no guarantee. The risk and complexity of it all is stupefying and whatever plan eventually evolves, whatever plan is put in place, it almost assuredly will grow or evolve; this will not be a one-step crisis fixer.
I'll reserve further comment until after this evening's Old Miss debate between the presidential candidates. The theme had been outlined as a discussion of foreign affairs issues. That is not the paramount and most immediate concern of the massive viewing audience expected.
 
To leave you with a different note and IF I am inaccurate (and I don't believe I am), I humbly apologize.  On CNN last evening I heard pundit and good-guy Paul Begala describing our incumbent president as "a high functioning moron".

---

The enormity of this financial crisis has turned the campaign into an audition for who could best handle a national economic emergency. I put my money on Obama. John McCain has managed, over these past few urgent days, to blame the collapse or meltdown on the Democrats. Lest we forget, McCain sided with each and every deregulatory effort that came up for a vote during his 26 years in Congress. Yet he has excoriated Wall Street for its greed and now called for regulations and oversight.
A quote from a most respected but unexpected source, George Will, in the Washington Post, couldn't have said it better, He wrote of Sen John McCain "His temperament, with its boiling moralism, intensely personal reactions to people and events, makes him not suited to the presidency".
 
Just an afterthought, but nonetheless probably accurate. As a result of the 700 billion dollar bailout, none of what Obama and McCain has promised voters will happen. A debt-ridden country won't have the wherewithal to afford tax cuts for the middle class, health-care reform or an indefinite commitment to Iraq.