We need to make the Bank of England more independent by giving members seven year non renewable terms who can only be appointed after vetting by the Treasury select committee and a vote in a reformed House of Lords . That would ensure the best people got into the MPC and that it was less open to political meddling as has happened under Labor . RPI-x is a far more reliable inflation measure – HCIP was just a fix because they use it in the Euro-zone . As we will be keeping the £ why bother with a false inflation measure ?

The Bank of England must be empowered to help failing banks and to boost liquidity and it should regain debt management powers too with a view to stopping anymore Northern Rock style mess ups . The tripartite system is too complex & unwieldy and no one seemed to know what was going on prior to Northern Rock and how to respond . Surely the end of the FSA and a clear demarcation of Treasury & Central Bank responsibility over who does what might simplify things somewhat ?

Inflation must be tamed to stop it ruining livelihoods and stopping business investment – a stable economic framework is vital for a lasting recovery . Setting a two year inflation target of 2% for the MPC to aim for every month would help stop future price spirals .

Fighting inflation is a wise idea – but as conditions point towards deflation gathering pace in 2009 lower interest rates now might not be a bad idea . Falling base rates on the back of diminishing inflationary pressures could be what the Doctor ordered as far as the economy is concerned as businesses go to the wall , unemployment rises , the housing market falls apart , the economy shrinks , disposable incomes fall and manufacturing industry & business investment decline . Even the service sector is going to the wall – we need lower interest rates now !

Would the MPC care to talk to Sir Stuart Rose about how the retail sector needs a boost ? Food sales falling by 7% and GM sales 6.5% down in the UK's favorite store shows that action is needed now !

Labour's rush to introduce nationalisation is perhaps symptomatic of their contempt and cynicism for the free market. Furthermore, this might have been partly to appease the more leftist elements.

I have great faith in the tenacity of the free market system, and have no doubt that in time, with minimal government intervention, that stability and vibrancy will return.

What is operating in the West is not proper capitalism – it is a perverted, "controlled", semi-free enterprise model. Straps instead of shackles. Casting the banks loose and letting free market forces operate is the best solution. You would be surprised how quickly the pieces can reassemble and recover.

It is better to whip off the plaster with one big scream, than a long series of whimpers.

The Moral Hazard implicit in this is staggering.

Come on boys and girls, stop worrying and wasting money by leaving your life savings in nice safe HSBC stuff the lot on line with (badbank-ed) and everyone else will bail you out if they go belly-up.

Truly, Truly astonishing incompetence.

(You may need to skip past the welcome screen)

The way I see it, clever people thinking up 'better' and 'better' packages has a lot to do with why we are in this mess in the first place.

I'm told (via the media) that Congressmen were lobbied 100 or 200 to one against the bailout.

I'm not surprised – after WMD Bush is the boy who cried 'wolf'. Congressmen and found it easy to accuse him and his crowd of scaremongering. There are also a lot of questions that no-one has been able to answer, fuelled by a lot of rumours.

For example can a mortgage only be in one CDO at once? I heard someone say that some mortgages have found their way into more than one CDO. I asked him if he was thinking about CDO squared, and we just ended up confusing each other. Neither of us knew what we meant, but we managed to agree that if we were going to buy them we'd sure as hell want to know.

If we (taxpayers) buy the CDO's do we set the collections policy for the underpinning loans and decide when to persue legal actions and ultimately reposession?

If you own a CDO and a mortgage that is connected to it defaults do you get the rights to all the money raised from reposession? How much does the originator of the loan take as commission for doing this if not?

If a mortgage payer defaults and their mortgage has been packaged into a CDO, does the CDO holder have the right to demand that the house is surrendered to him (i.e. the taxpayer) after repossession as opposed to auctioned off in a fire sale?

How on Earth do these 'Synthetic' CDO's work, the idea seems to be that the 'trustee' holds onto the 'high quality capital' and earns interest on it in order to pay for the defaults when they arise. How does the trustee earn interest exactly? Did they by any chance buy more CDO's with it?

What if, after buying the CDO's, the originator breaches their contract by not collecting the money correctly, what if they go bankrupt? Can the new owner of the CDO's take on the collections responsibility? If so how, and how quickly?

If politicans actually focussed on trying to explain things properley, instead of trying to bully, intimidate and scaremonger us into making a rash decision, surely this would be better than simply thinking up a better 'package'.

It didn't work with the EU Constitution (thanks to the Irish) and I hope Congress don't let it work with the dodgy mortgages until someone can set up a website to tell Joe Taxpayer exactly where he stands!