Lawmakers have just approved the $700 billion bailout plan for Wall Street.  The report I have just read on MSNBC doesn’t indicate that any help is on its way for homeowners facing mortgage defaults.  Apparently the rescue team bowed to White House pressure and skipped over the provision that would allow judges to restructure mortgage loans for troubled homeowners.  It’s easy to see why mortgage companies wouldn’t want judges to force the companies to accept less money for outstanding loans than the original contract stipulated.  But where’s the boost for average people in economic trouble in this bailout plan, outside of the vague promise that we’ll all be better off if the financial system works?

Ordinary citizens have every reason to complain about yet another government bailout of Big Business.  We don’t like to see tax money offered as a safety net for companies that fail and executives that can’t manage their business.  Why should the big guys get the money when the little guy has to endure risk indefinitely?  If that question can be answered satisfactorily for the American people, we’ll all feel somewhat better about the bailout plan.

Another flaw in the plan seems to be that executive pay won’t be capped for the people running firms that get the money.  Some politicians will tell you that, yes, executive compensation will now be limited.  They’ll tell you that those who brought down the system won’t be rewarded.  But loopholes exist that will allow executives to structure deferred-compensation packages that will bring home big, big paychecks.  I suspect that the hotshots won’t be looking at the $100-million-to-$250-million paydays that have been fairly common for CEOs of large corporations–corporations that lost money as well as those that made money–but the paydays will be big anyway.  Read the newspapers during the next year, and you’ll discover that executive pay is still stratospherically high.

My prediction won’t hold if the economy collapses.  But if the economy is buoyed up by the commitment of tax money to the banking system, the prediction will be good.  It’s an iron law of American capitalism.  Executive pay rises  faster than any other form of compensation in the entire economy.  Not too many years ago it was 100 times the wage of an average worker.  Now it’s 200 or 250 times the wage of an average worker.   And people know this.  That’s why they’re angry.

The political price is going to be high for the Republican Party.  When the party in power has an economic downturn on its watch, the other party usually takes the White House.  This year, at the end of eight disastrous years, the Republicans will pay dearly.  I know that the polls show a fairly tight race in many parts of the country.  I don’t believe them.  I did after Sarah Palin joined McCain as his running mate.  I saw how the power of myth and image could bend opinion overnight.  And McCain did enjoy a big bounce after the Republican convention.

But then the economic collapse of 2008 occurred, and I knew that the tallies were all different now.  The economy is the big issue, and the Republicans can’t claim that they weren’t responsible for its implosion.  (They’ll blame the liberals–just watch–but people aren’t going to be buying that argument.)

Moreover–to get back to a point I started to make above–the polls aren’t taking into account the vast voter registration that has taken place among Democrats and the huge numbers of young people who will be voting, some of them for the first time.  My feeling is that a landslide will occur.  President Barack Obama.  Deal with it.