$700 Billion: "We just wanted to choose a really large number"

If you didn't catch George Bush's address to the nation, don't worry, there wasn't much to miss. Basically he said that too many people screwed up on their mortgages, causing his buddies to lose out on mortgage securities. So if we don't give them money to get rid of the bad securities, the economy will go from here to the 7th ring of hell. One thing George forgot to mention were the facts of how this whole thing was going to work and he didn't answer something on the minds of many, why $700 billion?

Well a Treasury spokeswoman did that for him:

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

Wow. If it wants to see a bailout bill passed soon, the administration's going to have to come up with some hard answers to hard questions. Public support for it already seems to be waning. According to a Rasmussen Reports poll released Tuesday, 44% of those surveyed oppose the administration's plan, up from 37% Monday.

Hmm, I don't know about you, but that doesn't give me much confidence. In fact, nothing the Administration is doing right now gives me anything but the chills. Giant giveaways to the rich aren't going to solve anything. If there is any money going to fix this, it should be directed at homeowners.

One thing in particular pissed me off last night about that speech. Bush talked about loving the free market and if it screws up then let business pay the price, but if it screws up really bad, then we have to save it. No wait, that wasn't the worst of it. Oh yeah, I remember now. He said that the democratic capitalist society is still the greatest thing out there. Well Mr. Bush, this isn't democratic capitalism, its socialist corporatism.