With the markets and major players collapsing all around us, it's no surprise that surveys have shown declining consumer confidence. Of course, this means that we consumers would rather tighten our belts to make sure we've got extra resources for lean times, rather than continue to spend at or beyond our means, perhaps even recklessly.

It's therefore with great dismay that I watch the latest corporate hands reach out to beg for money from the federal government, as if they were the newest contestants in an anything-goes giveaway of taxpayers' assets. I'm talking about the auto giants, who apparently are going to run out of cash because people can no longer afford to buy Detroit's gas guzzlers and, until recently, the gas to fill them with. As a taxpayer, I resent Detroit grabbing money from my pocket to pay for an industry's poor planning.

I recently wrote to my senator, John Kerry, to share concerns that the bailout of financial institutions was dangerous, and that a better solution would be to guarantee lines of credit for creditworthy individuals. This would seem to make sure the cash goes to people who are likely to pay it back, rather than throwing cash at institutions that might make things better for just their own customers.

Guaranteeing lines of credit for creditworthy individuals seems to be at least part of a solution for the auto industry as well, as the availability of cash seems to be the biggest problem: without cash, people don't buy cars, and with it they might. This isn't to say that lines of credit are a panacea--the auto industry is in much bigger trouble than that--but maybe this will help ease some of our national financial constipation.

Regardless of how things pick up, it's going to be a while before they reach the pace of recent years. Lower demand means lower production, lower employment, higher cost of vehicles, and in any combination. It's likely that some workers will see their jobs disappear, which is difficult for everybody but is a risk of employment in a free market. We all know both the importance of saving for a rainy day and the difficulty of practicing what we preach. Somehow the latter seems to outweigh the former, yet one can only hope that the imperiled workers have better sense than that.

As our nation puzzles its way through the changes we're seeing, let's make sure we find thoughtful solutions to the immediate problems we face together as individuals. While most of us don't need a bailout, we are all a part of a solution that the government has yet to acknowledge; and this is because we the people have huge collective spending power that we're simply not exercising right now. If the bailouts make you unhappy, consider telling your congressmen that perhaps they need to take a new perspective, that of the common person, to fix to the credit crisis rather than serial bailouts at enormous taxpayer expense.