Speculative Musings

I'm still trying to make sense of everything that's happened in the last 72 hours. I'm not an economist, so I'm relying on expert's opinion about what would happen, economically, if the bailout wasn't passed. But of equal concern was what would happen, politically, if the bailout was passed. In an ideal world, the taxpayers would have been paid back, and then some, and I was hoping that the profits could have gone against the debt and prevented or at least mitigated future tax increases to pay the debt off later. But we don't live in an ideal world, (because, I suspect, in this ideal world, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in, and I might also have better hair) and what worried me the most was such a sudden expansion of government power following eight years of government encroachment into civil rights. The Republic was never meant to be run this way. Perhaps, politically, the bailout was a bad idea, even if it was a good idea economically (which I'm not yet positive it was.) But if we weigh both worst case scenarios, one where the government gains control over every aspect of our lives, or one where we plunge into another depression, how can one decide the lesser of two evils? Surely, I don't want the government to be all powerful, but I don't like the idea that there will be a repeat depression, which required the massive expansion of governmental power. Perhaps the lesser of two evils WAS giving the government the power to address this now and then rolling back the scales as the aftershocks to the economy ended.