—All TARP and the bailouts did was delay the inevitable, and make it much worse in the end.—
Precisely. I told my republican friends that they may not want McCain to win, since whoever won would be labelled as responsible for the coming mess. But the “kick the can” actions have done nothing but delay, at the cost of increasing the height of the cliff dramatically. And there is no such thing as “terminal velocity”. The higher the cliff, the faster we will be going when we hit the rocks below.
It’s not the “fall” which will kill America; it’s the “sudden stop” at the bottom.