I only got a C in Economics, and I don’t know my Fannie from my Freddie, so don’t bother trying to explain it to me because I won’t understand. But here’s how the bailout looks to an ignorant taxpayer (and voter). I guess we’re supposed to call it “The Paulson Plan,” so that when it fails it isn’t associated with the names of any politicians who expect to continue their careers. That’s why we can’t call it the “Bush-Boehner-Pelosi Plan.”

Anyway, I don’t want to oversimplify it, but here’s how it looks, big-picture style: Bush and his cronies have been picking our pockets for eight years. He’s about to leave office, and they’ve managed to find a way to scare us into giving them the rest of our money before they leave town. Is it any wonder that bankers and politicians are all for it and the public is 90% against it?

What I do understand is that nobody wants to take the blame for this situation. They blame “the market,” as if that were a natural phenomenon like “the weather,” and not a bunch of people trying to make the most money they can by cutting corners and crossing fingers. It’s a good thing they didn’t know we were going to bail them out or they might have gone even farther out on their creaky limbs. It’s hard to figure out if they were colossally stupid or diabolically clever in engineering things to work out this way.