Ahhh, but that is exactly what led us to this recession in the first place, my friend. In fact, deregulation is the official cause of the crisis according to the IMF.

This isn’t anything new, though. Republicans have espoused this belief for years. Back in the thirties Treasury Secretary Mellon, a Republican economist, was one of the most adamant supporters of ‘laissez-faire’. So when the Great Depression struck, Hoover had the chance to prove the efficiency of the theory as a way to deal with an economic crisis (along with some minor monetary policy adjustments), and as history shows – it failed horribly. Of course Hoover got his ass replaced by a “socialist” Democrat who, through the use of fiscal policy (much like Obama), pretty much restored the economy to a healthy state.

Now, letting everyone fail is simply not a realistic option. Unlike other recessions, this time we’ve lost the most amount of household wealth ever, mainly in the form of stock prices and home values. The losses amount to approximately 15 trillion dollars, or 75% of the GDP, which means that we’re pretty much out of cash. If we allow, say, AIG to fail it would be like the current situation times ten worse (since we DID let Lehman’s fail and they were only about 10% the size of AIG). That’s not the worst part. When a financial institution such as Lehman Brothers or AIG or Citibank fails, there’s this thing called the FDIC, which has to step in and pick up the pieces and pay everyone for their losses. Guess who funds the FDIC? Yep, that would be us, and since we’re out of cash let's just say it's not the best time to be paying out trillions of dollars and getting absolutely nothing in return.

I agree with you that the stimulus package was not a good idea, because it was too small!!! Granted, if Republicans were bitching and moaning about 700 measly billion dollars, and ultimately only three “traitors” voted for it, a stimulus package in the trillions would have given them a heart attack (which is not such a bad idea if you think about it). The stimulus package was only meant to deal with the unemployment, so it certainly won’t solve the problem on its own. But you can rest assured that it was the best stimulus they could have passed given the Republican opposition.

The next step is a well-crafted financial rescue plan by Tim Geithner. In my view it should be much like the Swedish model which, in broad strokes, privatizes the banks, takes care of the toxic assets, splits them up into smaller self-efficient institutions, and sells them back to the private sector earning taxpayers money on the way. But of course the plan won’t be bold enough because in order to get one or two Republicans to vote for it they will have to water it down to the point where it’s not effective enough.

And that is why Republicans should be shot.