So, how's financial armageddon treating you?

Yesterday the House defeated the $700,000,000,000 bailout bill and the Dow plummeted 778 points, the largest single-day drop (point-wise rather; averaging out to something like 7%) in the history of the stock market. People predicted that if that bailout bill didn't pass it would equate out to nothing less than Financial Armageddon.

And today, the stock market has rebounded by about half that drop. Which begs the question... why aren't chunks of the sky crashing through buildings as I type this?

The bus was on time this morning. My phone works. I got paid. My debit and credit cards work. We still have our house, electricity, internet, cable, natural gas... it seems that the sky, in fact, was not being propped up by an imaginary-figure bailout. What's actually happening is that the top 1% who own 80% of our wealth are starting to feel the pinch that the bottom 99% of us have been feeling for years!

But people are still buying groceries. Banks are still open... money is still worth something (maybe not as much as it was), and you and I aren't hurting any more than we were before this so-called crisis.

Let me share something with you: if there was a real crisis going on, it would still be on the front page of Yahoo. And while small businesses are suffering (gas stations can't borrow enough money to buy gas in various areas in the South), the world has not, in fact, ended. It seems... that 700 billion dollar bailout wasn't nearly as necessary as President Bush wanted us to think so that we would give his friends, so that we would give Hank Paulson 700 billion dollars to do with whatever he wants.

People are suffering. We know this. They're suffering a lot, and the Bush Administration doesn't care about those people. Losing your house? Too bad. Declared bankruptcy cause you or a family member got really sick last year and you couldn't keep up with the bills even though you have health insurance? Too bad. Give more money than most people can imagine to those at the very very top and maybe they'll make sure some of that gets down to you.

Trickle down economics... still doesn't work. Didn't work in the 20s. Didn't work in the 80s. It's not fucking working now. If you want to solve a foreclosure crisis, you have to help the people being foreclosed on, not the banks doing the forclosures.