Is everyone as confused as I am?

To me all this sounds so strange. It is like the government is now buying everything and does that not sound like communism or what. Eventually they are going to own everything and somebody will be getting rich in martens.

I agree... it does not make sense. As you said, the health of our economy depends on the consumer's economic position. If/when we can no longer buy the things we need and we're too far in debt to think of getting out, guess who will be there with a hand out? The government. They will have all the assets and we'll be enslaved in a sense. Kind of like socialism, but maybe even more sobering. Like it or not, the USA is changing quickly.

I agree it is confusing and it looks like the consumer will get screwed again. But, I don't think blame, or at least not all of it should be placed on the politicians. I think some if not all the blame should be placed on the consumer, the American citizens. I'm sure I'll get some flak because of this but I believe it's true. We have put too much faith in our government. We seem to go about our everyday lives, working and playing, with the attitude that it's not our place to worry about what the government is doing. We blame the politicians or watch the politicians during an election year blame each other for being out of touch with the public and the issues in their lives when I believe that it is really us who has become out of touch with the politicians and the government in which they work. The dictionary says that a democracy is government by the people. But I wonder how many people really keep up with what goes on in the government. We listen to the politicians talk about how to fix the economy. For example, we listen to Barack Obama talk about his plan to to raise taxes only on the rich. I wonder how many people know that this idea is also called income redistribution and I also wonder how many people know that income redistribution is a principle of Socialism. I wonder how many of us has friends, or knows of someone, that when we bring up a political topic or mention a certain politician by name, they have no idea who or what it is we are talking about but they can tell you the name of every AMERICAN IDOL winner. Have you ever watched Jay Leno on the TONIGHT SHOW go out on the street and ask passersby a particular history or politically related question, such as who a person is in a photo, and the majority of people can't answer the question correctly, but when he asks them to give the name of a celebrity in a particular photograph they nail it every time. I wonder how many of us could have answered the questions correctly. We laugh at these scenarios but when we realize just how little these people seem to know about the serious issues, it isn't very funny at all. The less we pay attention to what government is doing the more they are able to take advantage of us and the more power they gain in the process. We elect the politicians, we give them their jobs. But after the election we seem to just go back to our everyday lives and ignore what government is doing until the next election comes around. We want our politicians to perform their duties without all the corruption, and to clean up their acts. But, that won't happen until we take some responsibility and demand on a day to day basis that they do so.