We're not even nearly ready to get behind a leader who would go on national TV and tell us what really needs to be done about the credit crisis.

Because not one solution to this mess is painless, not one.

A credit-based economy is a dangerous notion in the first place, and once it reaches out as far as it has, you are really looking at a pyramid scheme. After a certain level of loaning and crediting and mortgaging...we find that there is more "credit" out there than can actually be paid.

Duh! Oops.

All a leader can do at this point is blaze a path through the inevitable adjustment. $700 billion dollars put out there under any plan they draft will put a bandage on the bleeding and possibly forestall or slow down a bank run. But it won't stop the bleeding, and it won't move the tectonic plates of this economy which is now seeing bubbles pop all over. The bailout is a spit in the bucket. And now that the money is disappearing, conservatives are turning into socialists and liberals are looking for Robin Hood.

We need to live within our means, and it could be that soon there will be no choice in the matter.

http://www.soundclick.com/MarkKaufman