The Fed's Helping Hand
It's been a tumultuous week on Wall street. The Dow over two days dropped 700 points only to recover and finish the week with a small gain. What drove this roller coaster ride was a series of near financial cataclysms: The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the near bankruptcy of AIG and the sale of Merrili Lynch to Bank of America. A week earlier the feds took control of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This looming financial catastrophe sent the Treasury and Congress scurrying for a solution and it came in the form of a $70 billion rescue package. A government entity will be created in order to warehouse all the bad debt on the books of these companies, similar to the Resolution Trust Corporation which saved us during the Savings & Loan scandal on the 80's. There are two schools of thought on the subject of bailouts: One side(congress) thinks this was the only option considering how intertwined these financial behemoths are with the global economy-leaving them to