Spot on, Jim, except for the fact that you write somewhat proleptically and we are
already there:

http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/cross.png

What is truly weird to me about this development is that the Fed/Treasury are able to do something like rescue AIG without any sort of democratic input. Perhaps the good thing is that the causal arrow is pretty clear here, which is not usually the case for economic issues. Phil Gramm is McCain's chief economic advisor. Gramm was the apostle of banking deregulation in Congress, and was up to his eyeballs with AIG and other firms marketing fancy derivatives. McCain has no answer other than market, market, market. Stay on message with this, Obama folk. Matt Yglesias has some useful comments here. Someone's ox always gets gored with an unregulated free market--in this case, the middle class. I'm almost in one of my Marxist "sharpen the contradictions" moods, hoping McCain gets elected so the chickens really come home to roost. The problem is that such moments in the US, absent an FDR, always risk turning into a uniquely American fascism, with the cross wrapped in the flag (as Sinclair Lewis and Ron Paul have argued). Joseph Stiglitz has some good practical policy suggestions here.