Call me Ishmael

After reading a lot of different stuff, which has left me little less ignorant than when I started, here's where I'm coming down on this whole Wall Street/Fed bail out thing --

Wall Street doesn't need to be bailed out by the American taxpayer.

The American taxpayer needs to be bailed out by Wall Street.

In other words -- got a few hundred million bucks stashed away here and there from stock & bond manipulation and speculation over the last 30 de-regulated years or so?

Your country needs you. Step right up with your wallets open, your credit cards extended, your pens poised over your checkbooks. All contributions to help alleviate the ongoing crisis fully tax deductible. Or, if they're not, well, if you send in a hundred million or so by midnight tonight, we'll thrown in a testimonial and a sentence recommendation absolutely free!

Er... um... you'd prefer to keep your ill gotten gains, regardless of how badly your bilked billions bite the rest of us in the ass? Safely in tax free interest bearing off shore accounts, at that?

Good Lord, man, why do you hate America so much?

All you robber-barons out there sitting on vast illicit pyramids of cash swindled from the Great War On Terror are included in this invitation as well. Step up to the window, you rich, you predatory, you bloated plutocrats all. The global economic system needs blood. Please donate generously.

And then, you know, you can get a job like the rest of us.

Oh, and if somebody could just confiscate all Paris Hilton's money on general principles and turn it over to, like, orphans, or something, I'd really appreciate it.