I Wish I Could Print Money Out of Thin Air Too!

Seven Trillion Dollars! Allegedly, that is the amount of money the US Federal Government has loaned/spent/given/(wasted?) to try to save the financial system.

While an actual recovery would obviously take more than a month or two, you would expect such massive government intervention to inspire renewed confidence in the average citizen.

It doesn't seem to be working. At least not for this citizen. I can't understand where the $7 trillion comes from? Did the government have $7 trillion sitting in a bank account somewhere? No, they decided to spend money that they don't have (also known as going into debt). How can they do that? Easy. They spend money they don't have, because they know they can just print the money and force us to repay the debt on their behalf, since we are the government.

Usually, when one goes into debt, it is to acquire an asset or some other item of value like a home, car or education. So far, no items of value have been identified in exchange for this massive amount of money the government has given to poorly managed and corrupt international corporations. While the idea of buying "toxic assets" to free up capital for these large banks was first presented as the most important part of the bailout, Economic Dictator Henry Paulson decided that wasn't such a good idea after all (you mean buying $Billions worth of "toxic assets" isn't a good idea?). Instead, he has been pumping money to countless banks and corps without any congressional oversight or transparency.

Considering that this entire mess seems to have been caused by bad borrowing and governmental manipulation (hello Federal Reserve), I fail to see how increased governmental debt will make anything better.