If you look at demographics, less than half of Americans contribute to federal taxes applicable to this bailout. Make that roughly $5,000 per taxpayer.

But we're in deeper trouble than that. The recent opportunity for self-regulated corporate financial responsibility has spawned a massive derivatives backup that can no longer be managed. At last count, the total notional value of derivatives worldwide (bearing in mind that derivatives are still unregulated and we don't know the value of unreported derivatives, and even what we do know has a wide margin of error) is 1.4 quadrillion dollars. 1,400 trillion dollars. 2,000 bailout equivalents. Every scrap of currency in the world adds up to almost 65 trillion dollars. Mortgages just happened to be the part of the foundation that unseated that mess. This can't be bailed out, we can only try to hold markets together while 19/20ths of the world's economy is written off the books.

But that's not what the bailout's about. The markets would continue to function if lawmakers decided they would like to proceed with more caution. The more immediate emergency involves the US Federal Reserve; which handed out $370 billion over the last two weeks. The Reserve's balance sheet indicates $200 billion left. And that's why the federal government is panicking. Without immediate action, the Reserve would become illiquid within as little as a week. That's the sucker that could go down.