I guess I have been too pointed in my commentary on the National site. Whatever, it is what it is.

When in actuality, all I have been trying to do is make a case in regards to the economy and financial markets over the past few weeks. The point being that we are at a crossroads that is now playing out.

Let's face it, Stevie Wonder could have seen this mess coming. You can actually look at the face of the every regulator speaking on television and see the stress on their face. Boys and girls, Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federeal Reserve Chairman Bernanke are scared. Make no mistake about it, this problem is huge.

There is no drama or complexity to this situation. Greed and stupidity from some well-educated financial minds took the country down a path of destruction by using leverage to give mortgages to people, with ridiculous terms, that had only one viable outcome, that being default. Everyone of any importance knew it was happening. The regulators, congress, and investment bankers, all buried their heads in the sand, in the hope they could steal as much money as possible and get out before the collapse.

Last night on 60 Minutes, I watched an interview with Henry Paulson. During the interview he was read e-mails between Wall Street analysts. One analyst wrote to the other, "I sure hope I'm rich and retired before this house of cards falls." The e-mail is a glaring example of the behavior and awareness on Wall Street.

The economy was already slowing when the mortgage bubble burst, the banks were over leveraged, and the value of the mortgages fell because of borrower distress. Now we will undoubtably have to deal with bad credit card and auto loan debts.

Wachovia basically failed due to bad option-ARM loans and was a "Take-Under" with the help of billions in taxpayer dollars, not a "Take-Over"! Many regional banks like Fifth Third Bancorp and Regions Financial will likely go away along with several others.

Whether or not it was a good idea to pile more bad assets onto the books of Bank of America from Merrill Lynch and Countrywide, or Citigroup with Wachovia is left to be seen.

This is a serious mess. Allocating $700 billion is like trying to stop a freight train with a fly-swatter. It should be noted, the Federal Reserve pumped $630 billion into the banking system during the past 24 hours, with little or no effect.