I can't defend the bailout plan submitted by the Fed to Congress. It is loosely constructed, giving broad discretionary powers and a purse equal to a third of the 2008 budget to the Executive branch. And it will dump up to $700 billion more atop the $600 billion in private debt the Fed already has levied on taxpayers. What the details of the final legislation will look like, no one can say at this moment.

What I can say is that our nation cannot be allowed to suffer a second Great Depression. Whether the credit megacrisis blindsided our government, happened more rapidly than expected or was somehow planned for nefarious purposes is irrelevant to the basic truth that a total collapse of the U.S. banking system would have repercussions far beyond our economy and our shores.

If, as economists such as Paul Krugman have said, we are faced with a return to 1931, then let us remember what those days gave the world: not just terrible hardships at home, but hardships beyond reckoning abroad. And those hardships in countries less stable than ours gave rise to totalitarian ideologies that required a horrific world war to halt.

We have no trouble understanding that poverty lends itself to crime in our streets. Imagine what nationwide poverty would look like today in the hot spots of the world. How many Kim Jung Ils would rise across the globe? How many Mussolinis and Hitlers would we face in the next few years? And what would a world war look like today?

The question is not whether to avert global economic collapse. The only reasonable question to ask now is: How best to avert it and preserve our democracy?