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While Paulson's bail-out bazooka seems to have put a short-term floor under the mortgage industry and the stock market, I have no doubt that the long-term consequences will make matters even worse. Each succeeding rescue attempt has less beneficial effect. Eventually, we'll look back in history and say that this was Paulson's "bombed bail-out bazooka"! And if the cost to taxpayers is high and our deficit balloons even more out of control, history will be very unkind to Bush and Paulson.

How many rescues and bail-outs have we seen over the past 13 months? If they had let the free markets work things through, we likely would have been in a recovery by now, since the average recession lasts less than a year. But instead, they seem unwilling to permit the economy to endure the nasty flavor of the medicine it needs, so we just keep blundering along from one blooding nose to the next. It's sickening. It's disheartening! And it will ultimately be even more painful than the right medicine would have been in the first place!