Now that the $700 billion bail-out package proposed by Henry Paulson has been not passed and then passed by Congress, and not supported and then supported and then not supported again by almost everybody else; it has become increasingly clear that that bail-out package no longer even matters anymore.

That bail-out package is so two weeks ago!

Since that first frantic plea by Paulson to, "Give me $700 billion NOW or the economy gets it!" the economy has, well, gotten it.

Bang!

Two trillion in stock market losses in just two weeks.

So governments around the world are now on to bigger and even crazier bail-out plans, even as I write this. For instance, just a few days ago Ben Bernanke quietly pumped $500 billion directly into the banks and gave another $39 billion to AIG. Congress (while nobody was paying any attention) gave $25 billion to the Detroit auto industry. John McCain promised to give $300 billion to rework individual mortgages by buying them high and taking a loss when moving them low (thanks taxpayers!) but only if he gets elected, and the U.S. government recently announced that maybe it will just take over the banks. It isn't sure yet; it's just a thought...

And we're just gettin' warmed up!

Not to worry though. The original $700 billion rescue package is still in the works, and eventually Hank Paulson and his team of intrepid Wall Street investment bankers really will get around to buying up some toxic securities at some kind of price, we don't know what kind or when or how--but we do know for sure that once he starts doing that, something will happen or it won't.

The thing is, we have to trust him. He's on it.

Meanwhile, Rome seems to be burning and no one has even fired up a fiddle yet.

So I thought it would be cool, in the spirit of good old Yankee ingenuity, to list some of this week's most popular and least publicized economic bail-out ideas. I mean it's clear that whoever is in charge of this show has temporarily lost the remote control, so maybe we can all help get the country (and the world) back on track by pitching in. What are YOUR ideas for a good bail-out?

Here without any more delay, are ten of mine. Feel free to add your own.

Your country needs YOU!

People are so judgmental sometimes. "You can't run an economy on debt alone," they complain, and "People in the U.S. spend money they don't have," and "The war in Iraq has already cost us nearly a trillion dollars and we aren't one whit safer as a result." And so on and so forth.

Bitch, bitch, bitch...

You know, there's absolutely nothing wrong with being completely delusional about money and life and consequences, you just have to do it online!

If the United States joined an internet dating site, it would have it made in the shade. Debt could be profit, up could be down, war could be peace. You just have to keep it all virtual.

The U.S. doesn't have to bail itself out, it just has to create an online profile for itself in which it is slim, prosperous, witty, and well-dressed. The United States will be blonde in this profile, and it will have the goal of, "...helping other nations to achieve world peace and also learning sign language and working with underprivileged children." The United States will smile a lot and wear lipstick.

The United States will get lots of e-mails from 50-year-old lechers in stained t-shirts who don't shave and are unemployed. But, it will look totally hot.

I don't really understand how Wall Street got us into this mess with tricky investments when any fool can just slap up a website and make $100K a day while playing Grand Theft Auto and eating Ding Dongs. I mean, geez, do we have to teach these stockbrokers everything?

The United States should take that $700 billion and buy up 700 million domain names, then slap up 700 million longtail keyword niche articles with good product placement, and before the day is out, they will be delivering truckloads of cash to the doorstep of the United States. Its really that easy!

What is especially great about this bail-out idea is that it would put lots of 17-year old slackers to work putting up the websites and all they will really require in return is snack cakes and unlimited access to X-box, unlike stockbrokers, who want Rolex watches and Italian shoes and Feraris and condos and lots of other expensive crap like that. Plus, this solves the CEO salary problem.

CEOs? We don't need no stinkin' CEOs!

At last count, the population of the U.S. was right around 300 million which means the $700 billion tax bail-out comes to approximately $2700 per American family. Why waste $700 billion on Wall Street? Why not take this same $2700 and send every family in the United States to Disney World?

Before you start in about how wasteful and capricious such a bail-out would be, let me just remind you that we got into this big financial mess because we forgot what our American values truly are, and nothing underscores those values like a trip to Disney World.

At Disney World we learn quintessential American values and life principles such as 1) A virtuous life is very expensive and $8 Coca Colas are the fuel that stokes the family furnace, 2) Nothing bad ever happens to people who spend lots of money, and 3) You have to be at least four feet tall to have any fun in this world.

Don't think of it as a vacation. Think of it as a mass motivational retreat. The first Presidential candidate to propose this bail-out wins.

Now I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, why should we give you $700 billion? You're not the Treasury Secretary! You're not the Federal Reserve Chairman! Your Dad isn't the former head of the CIA!

That is all true. But on the other hand, what would really be so terrible about giving me the $700 billion? Do you see any immediate positive effect from giving it to Hank Paulson? I mean, he's an OK guy I guess, but the truth is that as former CEO of Goldman Saks he already has plenty of money, whereas I just lost my $12K a year bank job and that is very very sad.

If you give me the $700 billion, here is what I will do:

I will buy pizza for everybody. I will, I'm not lying. That's the kind of nice, generous person I am. When was the last time the CEO of a major Wall Street investment bank bought you pizza?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

So at the very least, give some thought to giving me that bail-out money instead. I deserve it at least as much as Paulson does.

On the outskirts of the midsize Indiana city where I grew up sits a home business with a big sign in the front lawn that says, "Live Bait and Computer Repair Here."

I'm not making this up.

For some time now I've wanted to make a coffee table book filled with nothing but weird signs like that--signs that are real and a bit off the beaten track. For instance, another sign I found on a concrete block building that had the windows completely bricked in proclaimed that the business inside was comprised of experts in window installation. The sign said simply, "The Window People!"

Another good one was just outside of Hammond, Indiana--a bombed out abandoned ghetto church with no intact windows or doors with a sign out front that proclaimed the name, "The First Church of the Everlasting God."

What I'm thinking here though is that banking could be improved by combining it with other services people appreciate more and are willing to waste money on. How about "The First National Bank and Coldstone Creamery"? Or what about "The Krispy Kreme National Trust"? If we really hit the skids we could start up "The Hooters & Girls Next Door Savings & Loan" or even "The Starbucks Philllips 66 Fidelity Trust Corporation"?

I don't know, I think it could work. Plus, if the business IS the bank, that solves your liquidity problem right there.

I'm not sure how much mortgage debt is currently floating around, but I hear it is a lot. Part of the reason it's a lot is that the people who made all these bad mortgages immediately sold them to investment banks who chopped them up and sold them to other banks who sold them again and then sold them again, so that now, one bad mortgage has morphed into about $62 trillion in bad investment vehicles and FUBAR securities.

Now, it's true that almost nobody understands these things. Not even the idiots who came up with these brilliant investment ideas. So instead of trying to sort out that enormous clusterf**k why not just pay off everybody's mortgage? Just start handing out 'get out of jail free' cards to the people living on Baltic Avenue and let the people who land on Park Place scramble to pay the rent on their three hotels thank you very much? I mean no one put a gun to their heads and forced them to put three hotels on Park Place, right?

Hey, I know how play Monopoly!

Don't these guys ever play Monopoly?

As everyone who hangs out at Hub Pages knows, lots of people are all worked up right now about the Presidential election. New commentators are even talking about "class warfare" and the growing populist movement on "Main Street" and how nobody can be President anymore unless he or she learns to slam down brewskies with the little people.

Well, if that's the case, why are we even messing around with elections anymore?

I say we hold a big Lottery in America and whoever wins gets to be President and gets to spend the $700 billion any way he or she wants. If we charge enough for the tickets, we will make enough money to pay for the lottery itself, the bail-out, and the national budget for the next decade.

Americans are sick of this election but we really like lotteries. Even if we only make $6 an hour applying asphalt to parking lots we'll buy lottery tickets and beer and just show up at grandma's house for dinner. Why trash this American tendency when we can exploit it and be back in the black again?

It's just a thought.

Have you read about Iceland going bankrupt? Well, they have. They're flat out broke up there, not a dime, not a spare krona laying around anywhere up there for so much as measly cup of glog. Seriously, those Icelanders are even more screwed than we are.

So how about if we buy Iceland? That's right. We buy Iceland and ship all the stockbrokers and investment bankers up there and teach 'em to fish. Because we all know that if you give a man $700 billion you feed him for a day (especially if he works for an investment bank), but you teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Ship those guys up there and get them fishing, and while they are gone we'll go back to some kind of barter system here like in the Mad Max movies.

We can send Sarah Palin to Iceland with the bankers. She can be the Ice Queen and cryogenically preserve John McCain so he can be President of Iceland forever. Then we can elect Obama as President of the U.S. and have a big old smelt barbeque.

I'll bring the Mac & Cheese. Everybody will be happy!

I was reading the other day that most United States retail banks are currently leveraged 30:1 and keep themselves afloat through creative bookkeeping and constant borrowing and lending. In other words, for every one million dollars they actually have in assets they have 30 million in debts and liablities, money they've borrowed to invest in this that or the other thing. So when a bank makes a bad investment, you've really only paid for 1/30th of it with your own own money. The rest of that money is totally imaginary.

So why are we even worrying about this stuff?

As I was reading this I realized that, damn, I could start my own bank.

Yeah, seriously! I'm 'leveraged' too! So here's the deal--Send all your money from your paychecks (those of you who still have paychecks) to Bill and me c/o Pay Pal and we'll invest it in stuff that won't work out, and if you need any of it for yourself, we'll charge you $36 to withdraw it and $50 in monthly maintenance fees, plus a $30 statement fee and a $15 fee to talk to a banker.

On the other hand, if you just let us have your money, we'll send you a nifty foam coaster that says "Bill and Pam's Bank" on it.

And here's the beauty part: We won't make any subprime loans.

Trust us.

Last week, on top of the $700 billion bail-out, Bernanke pumped $500 billion into the banks and gave AIG another $39 billion, and now Congress is talking about another $150 billion stimulus package, this time to pay for extended unemployment benefits and stuff the states need like roads and schools and government salaries and crap like that. The bail-outs are coming so fast and furious you can't keep up with them even if you are a professional data entry person. We're literally giving money away faster than we can count it.

This can't go on.

So I was thinking, how about if we have one of those 50s-style game shows where we have a trivia contest amongst all the major bank CEOs (we could ask them questions about money and finance--that would eliminate most of them!) until we get down to just two finalists. Then we put the two finalists in glass boxes, naked, after making them roll around in corn syrup. Then we start dropping $1000 bills into the glass enclosures. The CEO who is able to grab, stick, eat, or stuff the most $1000 bills onto/into his body and body cavitities gets to run the "The First Only Bank In America," and he gets to take all the money from all the other banks and do whatever he wants with it.

Viewers can participate by voting in advance for one of the CEO contestants.

If you win, you get a handy foam coaster!

That's all I have for now.

I think we are anticipating a Dow Jones rally for today, so the next few hours may be happy ones and they may well render this hub irrelevant for a short time. But I have faith that eventually everything will go wrong again and we will be back at work cooking up instant solutions as fast as we can.

Let's be ready. What are your own ideas for bail-outs? I know you have some!

Share them here and you may even win a semi-fabulous prize!

(Or not.)