When Steve? There is no chance of anything in the way of "change you can believe in" from the economic policies being crafted by the wall street/Fed/Hedgies in the Obama economic cabinet. How in god's red hell did he pick these people who are the very people who deregulated derivatives and promoted these toxic securities while working in Wall Street? Their idea is to protect themselves from their idiocy by tapping taxpayer money to pay off their mistakes. Nothing will change politically until Joe the Public comes to the obvious realization that our so called democracy is a sham. Real political power is in the hands of the Financial Wall street establishment which of course includes the Fed, Hedge funds and all varieties of private equity to control the economic rules and regulations designed to benefit the financial oligarchy in power.Posturing from our sideshow congress about AIG bonuses is a distraction to obscure the real looting of our currency, our treasury and our children's economic future by these misguided greedy and deranged Keynesian bankers and politicians. Until the great unwashed masses realize that their destiny is not controlled by a constitution , a bill of rights or a representative democratic form of governance and realize instead that their American political system has been hijacked by these wealthy financiers.....until they figure this out and then rise in great numbers massing in Wall Street and NY to demand the return of their government, there will be no change. Sadly, despite a change of party and the replacement of an imbecile with a smooth salesman, nothing much has changed in Washington. Any lingering hope I used to have that my vote counts on election day has vanished. We are probably a long way away from a French Revolution style of revolt which it will probably take to effect real change.. It may be possible to effect change by flooding the White House and congress with a blizzard of mail and email demanding the resignation of Obama's economic goons who bear a huge responsibility for causing this crisis in the first place.The policies of extensive debt and leverage which caused this debacle is being promoted to cure this debacle. These policies may delay the ultimate plane crash.They will not prevent it and a default on a national scale looks unpreventable IMO.

..until Joe the Public comes to the obvious realization that our so called democracy is a sham.

Most thinking people realized this at some point during elementary school. But what is Joe supposed to do about it? Vote for Nader? Riot? Joe with a mortgage & car payments, kids, a job he needs to keep... SWAT team visits in the middle of the night are a bit traumatic. So is jail. Joe bends over & takes it. Perhaps he even pretends to like it. The recent election at least made one thing perfectly clear: a Bush or an Obama, doesn't matter, BAU is sustained until it simply can't be anymore.