Most of the time I agree with the fine writers at The Nation. Not this time. The bailout plan, while flawed, needed to be passed. Nobody seriously tried to suggest that this plan would unfreeze credit, or halt the economic decline. What it could have done, however, is prevent continuing collapse of credit in this country.

People need to understand that conditions causing the current economic sluggishness are remarkably similar to the conditions that led to the Great Depression.

We are coming out of an era in which the stock markets were artificially inflated due to exuberant investing in companies that weren't actually producing anything. In other words, investors were investing in the idea of the companies, and not in what they actually produced. In fact, our financial economy has increasingly ignored American manufacturing and productivity, further rewarding outsourcing of jobs to other countries.

This, in turn, has led to a decline in American manufacturing and the housing and auto industries. The has a snowball effect upon the rest of the economy, leaving American workers, as usual, on the outside, looking in. Naturally, they began to have increasing difficulty in making ends meet.

Thus, a credit crisis ensued. Too many subprime mortgages and risky ARMs were sold to people who were not appropriate candidates for those products. Then, as they couldn't make the payments, foreclosures began to rise. At the same time, large financial institutions invested billions of dollars in investments built around these shaky loans. Is it any wonder the investments lost money?

Now some of these large financial institutions are failing, just as many banks failed during the first years of the Great Depression. Is anybody scared yet? I am.

This bailout was need not to reinvigorate the economy but to slow the bleeding. Certainly much more remains to be done. Many critics of the plan, including The Nation, have opted for the easy way out, pointing out the flaws and weaknesses of the plan, without offering any legitimate alternatives.

Now Congress and the president need to hammer out another compromise package, and hopefully prevent anyone from delivering fiery speeches in the name of "iron-willed ideological unity" that could kill legitimate attempts to stop the American--and world--economy from continuing to spiral out of control.

Scott Hercher

Mt. Cobb, PA