>>>>> the selloff has been all about things that mere mortals do not understand, as evidenced by the decision of the mortals in Congress to push through an $700 $850 billion bailout plan on Friday night that did nothing to assuage the markets, failed to unfreeze the global credit system, <<<<<

The $700 billion was only the FIRST STEP in the process. It was not intended in itself to cure the entire seized credit market but only designed to let banks know that they could deal with each other bank-to-bank because any bank could be assured that every other bank would have its bad paper covered by Treasury. It was not intended to completely solve the entire credit crisis. It was intended that OTHER legislation would follow to add supplementary bells and whistles to make a complete rescue package. Congress messed around and failed to put through the $700 billion plan timely, and so clouded what was intended that it failed in its main purpose, and even Congressmen failed to understand the purpose and the need for immediate action. Also too much rhetoric was about cost to the taxpayer and “our children and grandchildren”, whereas bad paper would be bought for pennies on the dollar and redeemed for much higher in the future. For example, poorly performing mortgages could be bought from a stressed bank for twenty cents on the dollar of face value and later sold for fifty cents on the dollar or even held to maturity at one hundrd cents on the dollar.