It's hard to believe Bush on this crisis

In Mr. Falk's letter of Sept. 22, he seems to be saying two things:

1. Bush, Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke gave a superior response to the current crash of U.S. financial institutions by gathering and analyzing facts, considering alternatives and making a decision to have U.S. taxpayers pick up the tab for at least $785 billion. And they did it all in only two or three days.

2. If this had been Congress looking into this problem, it would have taken years and even then, Congress is "quite incapable of solving any of the nation's pressing problems."

In short, he believes the G. Bush & Co. executive branch is not only brilliant but also very fast acting. Kind of like Alka-Seltzer.

Excuse me, but does anyone remember the rocket sled ride Bush & Co. took Congress and the American people on when he and his cabinet railed about Iraq, WMDs and how we might go up in a mushroom cloud if we didn't quickly attack this oil rich country?

Well, we did. And I don't think it worked out very well, as we're over five years down that road still spending $10 billion a month, no Bin Laden ever found, tens of thousands of people killed, millions of refugees from Iraq and the Afghanistan-Pakistan area becoming more unstable by the day.

One further detail omitted by Mr. Falk is who was controlling Congress and the presidency when our government systematically dismantled the federal regulatory laws which were supposed to prevent these types of meltdowns. Republicans.

In our neighborhood, we have several houses which are vacant and not selling.

In those cases where whoever had "bought" a home was living in it, and was making those low payments (rather than later higher ARM payments), wouldn't it be better to put that family back into that house with a 40- or even 50-year mortgage rather than throw up our hands and tell the taxpayers to pony up $785 billion at minimum?

Jim Peterson

Hoffman Estates