I'm sure you're right.  There should be planning, but I'm curious as to what could really be done.  The answer to 9/11 was to flood the market with cash.  It worked short term, but the liquidity that stuck around for the last 5 years has put such a long term hurt on us, that we should ask if it was the right thing to do.

Then again if they didn't do that we would have corrected back 5~6 years ago and things would be different.  I bet we would have wasted less enegy though.  Speaking of the dollar decline it broke the $84 price floor that everyone keeps talking about.

I pulled this from itulip.com

Soon credit spreads will widen and liquidity we shrink even more.  If you have not noticed, the Yen carry-trade died and global money supply has fallen below nominal GDP.  If you think that extremely low default rates will support tight spreads, recall that our nation's all-time low default rate was during the second quarter of 1997, which was on the eve of our worst default cycle since the 1930s. High default rates are symptoms of economic malaise, not its cause. During these periods, quality credits and high quality stocks bests low quality securities, which reverses the trends seen since December 2002.  Stocks smell The Devil.

I don't know how to verify the Yen carry trade ending, but I'll take Eric Janszen's word for it.  Bush has touted that the highest % of home owners ship has been attained under his leadership.  Yet the devil in the details says that it's only because all of those who SHOULDN'T have gotten a house, got one with a big fat AMT loan.  People really have little financial sense, so the bankers bilked them.  Should we expect different?  Those houses are being repo'd and will be available for discount soon at a subdivison near you.  

Point: We have to be near the edge of the cliff, or at least the mole hill we've built.