Beginning of the End for US?

My friend comoprozac has kind of beaten me to the punch here. But I wanted to comment on this financial crisis thing. Once again, let me add a disclaimer that I know about as much about this as Sarah Van Palin does, our prospective VP. therefore, forgive my ignorance and feel free to fact check me or clear up any shortcomings.

Let me get this straight. We have a major financial problem. China owns a ton of our debt. The dollar is very weak. Our fellow common citizens are living beyond their means. The price of gas is skyrocketing leading to higher prices all over the place. Banks are failing as a result of the housing problems. The housing problem is comprised of a ton of people going into foreclosure because they can't pay their mortgages (see living beyond our means). I know from my own experience, I was approved for loans WAY higher than I knew I could afford. So I assume other people took the loans for higher than they could afford?

Is this all right?

The fault can be placed on many people's shoulders. The banks should not have allowed so many loans out so easily. The people taking these loans should have understand what they really and truly could afford and not just qualify for. Corporate heads are getting caught being corrupt. Government officials saw this coming and did little if not nothing (appropriate double negative correct?) to avoid or solve it.

How am I doing?

Sigh.

Now what?

The government bails out the banking industry by eventually passing it on to us through more taxes. But wouldn't higher taxes mean less disposable income? Wouldn't our habits to live beyond our means remain? Wouldn't China still own us? Will that really fix oil prices or the strength of the dollar? Could this just be the lesser of two evils?

Personally, I would rather have my tax money go to education, crime fighting, anti-drug campaigns, effective, safe, easily accessible birth control along with birth control education, roads, other infrastructure, afforable healthcare as well as other social service things than the banks. But maybe I don't see the ramifications here. I am confident my ignorance is blinding me here.

Like my friend comoprozac mentioned in his blog "Living in Misery," I too received a chain email about how the money used for the bailout should just go straight out to the common citizens. It went on to list all the positive outcomes of doing this as did comoprozac. For instance, we could use it to pay off these debts of ours. wouldn't that help the banks? Also, it could be used to make home improvements creating more money into the economy. Isn't that good?

I don't know. But this all scares me. It is more evidence of our impending doom. We are either going to fall apart as a country or be hit by the apocalypse in 2012 from this polar shift. The bees are disappearing and according to Walt Whitman, we got 7 years or whatever he said before we will be gone.

I'd prefer our country just quietly sink a bit out of superpower status and let someone else fix the world's problems while we leave everyone else alone and build up our borders. Isolationism I say.....sarcasm my friend. sarcasm. I wish we could.