Americans ought to be outraged. At this moment, our government has failed us utterly. The people we pay taxes to out of every pay check have failed to prevent our economy from falling apart. The bail out will not fix it, and if it does manage to pass in some form in the near future, our problem still remains: our country is run by people who don't know what they are doing.

They played with our economy as though it were a toy, and this is the result. Widespread failure across the board. And it's going to get a lot worse. We're seeing the beginnings of a ripple effect in our financial sector that will eventually go far enough to effect the majority. Right now, it's people who had savings or loans with those banks in trouble. For the moment, maybe your savings is safe. But what happens when it isn't? What happens when the dollar collapses and you can no longer afford to buy gas and food. What if you're forced to choose one or the other?

The way America was going, it could not sustain itself. Sub prime mortgages are part of the problem, but credit is an even bigger one. The American lifestyle has snowballed into this ridiculous parody of itself, and it has finally begun to unravel.

The only truth is this: we have allowed the government to do this to us. They may be partly responsible, but we have stood by while they took away more of our freedoms, raised our taxes, and spent the money on destroying our economy and system of education. We've sat back and done nothing while they took apart our country, and now what do we have to show for it? A failing economy and a lower standing in the world.

The only issue any politician wants us to focus on is who can be blamed for the crisis, while we sit here watching the economy fall apart. The real question is not 'Whose fault is it?', but 'Who will clean this up?'

The answer is this: our generation. We will be the ones who face the consequences of corporate greed and a government outgrowing its purpose. We will face the future of the world in an America that has failed its people. We will be the ones who rebuild it.

This time is the most important, because it will require great leadership, and I honestly don't believe it exists anywhere in modern American politics.

Hopefully things aren't as bad as they seem. Hopefully, we'll weather this storm and come out on the other side relatively unscathed. Hopefully, the dip in the market that will continue during this week will be short term.

Hopefully, we won't have a President who knows nothing about the economy or what could be done to fix it, because I'm not sure America can weather three "unimaginable" events in a decade.