If we buy them/bail them out, don't we "own" them?

Part of any "deal" should be immediate suspension of dividend payments to anyone but an escrow account set up to either divvie up any "profits" to the US citizens or to re-pay the "loans"..

I recall a time when Ma-Bell was deemed "too big to exist" and was broken into smaller pieces..This is what needs to happen to these behemoths too. If they are "too big to be allowed to fail", then the underlying truth is this.. they are just TOO BIG..period.

These monster-corps have been gobbling up everything they could, and it's obvious that they "could not afford it"....so they need to be restored to a manageable size, and there should definitely be salary caps in their new permutation..I would like to see a percentage basis....like maybe the TOP CEO pay should be less than 300% of the lowest paid part-timer..

make the government sell off the bad mortgages for pennies on the dollar and put the miserable proceeds in the pockets of the Treasury department. They get to do whatever they want with the pittance they end up with. They then make the financial institutions their "agents," and start making contracts (unfettered by the rules that hamper "free" contracts by other parts of the government) with their friends to privatize all the profits. Of course the beneficiaries of the privatization will not be me and you, especially not those of us who saved our money and put it in 401(K)s and other funds for retirement. The beneficiaries will be the friends of Bush -- the big guys make out. We lose. And the Republican sheepie who think that somehow because they play golf at the local country club and have one of the larger houses in their small town, they're rich will vote for McCain and curse high taxes. Same old. Same old.