I traveled across the craggy part of Misery today, listening to NPR on the hills and static in the hollers. I managed to catch most of this discussion about our government providing a 30 billion dollar line of credit in order to facilitate one huge investment bank buying another. One of the guests on the program, Harvard Business School investment banking professor Sam Hayes, described the unprecedented government bailout of the failing Bear Stearns as "essential" to prevent a domino effect that would take out additional banks and threaten our entire financial system. I find that shocking.

If the looming failure of one bank requires the federal government to engineer and finance a bailout over the course of a weekend, it can only mean one thing; the rest of the world's investors are beginning to figure out just how much bad paper US banks have been peddling to them. And they are not happy.

So here comes dubya, lurching to the rescue, running the country like he ran those oil companies in Texas back in the '80s. Right into the ground. To prevent a run on US banks, he's showing the world that he's willing to put the power of the US Treasury behind those banks. The same Treasury he already gutted with tax cuts. The one that is currently running hell-for-leather in reverse with insane, deficit, War on Terra spending. We're now covering bad paper with more bad paper. Welcome to the recession of 2008.

Sure I'm just a hillbilly with a smart mouth and a computer, but my gut has been telling me for better than a year now that there are hard times ahead for our economy. Today my gut is telling me those times are here. If I had enough money to worry about, I'd be scared shitless right now.