IF WALL STREET FAILS SO WILL MAINSTREET blared the headline. Rubbish. Stock markets for gambling on stocks after they are purchased by the original buyers may provide a useful function, but they are not essential to a working economy. Civilized countries have functioned well for many years without the likes of Wall Street. 

Equity is not the only way to invest. Debt is another way. Equity does not have to be paid back, but debt does, and creditors are usually more conservative than equity investors, at least they were until debt shacked up with equity and went to the casino for a good time, thanks to the deregulating free marketeers.

Well let them take the beating they preached and now duly deserve. That will not be the end of Wall Street, though it would be a close shave with some deep cuts.

If the government is going to help out in this crisis, then let it invest our money wisely, nationalize the companies or take at least 51% percent equity Chavez Style, and give the taxpayers a return, instead of buying up collaterally damaged goods and unloading them prematurely to vultures who will turn them around for a huge private gain, leaving us holding the bag as usual. 

I bet most companies looking for a bailout would find one somewhere else if the government proposed a fair deal for our money. As for the whole country going down the tubes if we don't  save the power elite who ran amuk at our expense, look at it this way: if all the money in the world disappeared at midnight, everything else would still be there.

Of course without a medium of exchange the machine would grind to halt except for barter until another medium was made. And the relative claims represented by accumulated money would have to be funded after they are suitably revamped for smooth functioning of this nation first of all.

Well, we have the money and the machine, but we need better engineers, or so it would seem. Yes, we would have to have faith in the money first, or else it would be worthless, and that's why the back of the Federal Reserve Note refers to trust in God.  Neither would the Ten Commandments work unless faith is first placed in God - define that word as you will.

I shine your shoes and you offer to shine mine, but I don't have time today, so you give me a dollar note - will you keep your promise? Let's start keeping our word instead of threatening and using bankruptcy as an estate planning device for the well-to-do.