OH LIKE LAUTENBERG EVEN KNOWS HOW TO WORK A FAX MACHINE: But if he did he'd be seeing this totally state-of-the-art Krugmanny bit of US American democracy:

I’m one of your constituents, and I want to urge you to not vote for any version of the bailout plan that does not involve an exchange of equity for taking troubled assets off a bank’s books. This is close to what Sweden did when they were going through a similar crisis to our own, and I think it would work much better than the massive cash dump Chairman Bernanke and Secretary Paulson are proposing. The Chairman and the Secretary seem to think the crisis is one of confidence, and if we just pump more money into the banks things will turn around. I do not think they are right. We are in the midst of a massive deflation of the housing market and no amount of emergency lifelines from the Federal Reserve will change that. I think Congress will be serving the nation much more effectively if they offer banks the chance to exchange equity for their bad assets. This will ensure that the banks that are in trouble receive help—at a price—without simply giving money away. I believe this was how Sweden dealt with their crisis; it was painful, but it dealt with the crisis quickly. The alternative model is Japan’s, which propped up their failing banks for far too long and lost a decade of economic growth because of it, that they even now have not fully recovered from. I do not think that needs to happen here.

Thank you.

Hurray! My vote counts! Or something. Anyway--as far as I can tell the housing bubble is deflating no matter what. Tossing money at banks who may not even need it is not going to help.