The best place to be is out of debt and with a plan to sustain yourself and your family should things get really ugly. Talk with neighbors, or church members, about how assistance to each other can be structured.
If it's not needed - great. If it is needed then you will be one of the few that have planned wisely.
I think that this is a great time to buy a big house in a nice area. Interest rates are being pushed down artificially in a frantic attempt by the Fed to reinflate the housing market. A mortgage of 5.5% is possible now, that's 30 years fixed. But housing prices have already declined a great deal off their Fed-induced highs. Depending on the market, locking in a low interest rate now makes good sense in view of the fact that the bailout will certainly lead to terrible inflation. I think the real inflation rate will rise to about 15%, the CPI will be more like 10%, and it will stay there a few years. This will eat the value of the monthly mortgage payment even as it drives up sale prices.
I remember when I was first married and looking to buy a house end of the 80s how I envied the folks who'd bought end of the 60s or early 70s. Both the purchase prices and their fixed rate mortgage payments looked ridiculously small. But I'm sure it didn't seem that way when they bought their houses - but that's what it became after the sustained high inflation of the 70s.
I had exited the market some time ago and plopped the money into foreign real estate, which did quite well (mostly). I think it's time to buy something big now in a terribly depressed place like southern Florida or out in California someplace, like LA, Orange County, or Bay Area.
This bailout makes inflation a certainty. I say protect yourself now by getting an inflation hedge, like a big old repossessed house someplace nice.