If we are going to give large amounts of money to the banks we are going to have to make sure that they are overseen much better than they were before. That means that we are going to need much tougher banking regulation than we currently have. This will not only help us to avoid more disasters in the future but also help to restore confidence in the economy. Unfortunately there is a surprising amount of political opposition to this as well.

It is also going to be necessary to find a way to put a stop to all of the foreclosures that are going on. This is largely going to require the government to help out people who are having trouble paying their bills. It is also going to be necessary to change bankruptcy law to make it work better. The goal needs to be help homeowners to hold on to their homes. If we don't do this the problem will just continue as more and more bad mortgages are foreclosed on.

Ultimately any plan to get out of the financial crisis is going to require an increase in government spending. This is of course a problem since the government is broke. The way the government is supposed to operate is that they should run a surplus during the good years so that they can afford to run a deficit and spend money during the bad times. Unfortunately we ran huge deficits during a booming economy and now that we need money to get us out of a financial crisis there is none. The only option now is massive tax increases which is of course not a politically popular option.

The when we are going to get out of the financial crisis is hard to answer in large part because it is unlikely that we are going to do the things that we need to. Therefore we will likely limp along for quite a few years until the economy is able to correct itself. It will likely take decades to get back to the point we were at before the crisis started.